George AM Cross
George Alan Martin Cross (born September 27, 1942 in Cheshire ) is a British-born American molecular biologist and parasitologist. He is particularly concerned with trypanosomes and other unicellular parasites.
Cross studied at Cambridge University , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1964 and his PhD in microbiology in 1968. From 1969 to 1977 he conducted research in medical parasitology at the Medical Research Council and from 1977 to 1982 in the research laboratories of the Wellcome Trust, where he headed immunochemistry and molecular biology. He was also a consultant and instructor in biology at Woods Hole Marine Laboratories from 1980 to 1984. Since 1982 he has been Andre and Bella Meyer Professor of Molecular Parasitology at Rockefeller University , where he was Dean from 1995 to 1999. 1983 to 1987 he was an advisor to the WHO .
He specializes in trypanosomes, which among other things cause the often fatal Chagas disease and sleeping sickness in the tropics. Since they split off from the other eukaryotes relatively early , they have developed some unique genetic mechanisms, such as a post-transcriptional modification of the m-RNA, which is polycistronic in contrast to most eukaryotes . As Cross and coworkers showed, the cell surface consists of a type of glycoprotein , which, however, is highly variable among the individual trypanosome strains. This high variability of the surface glycoproteins (VSG, variant surface glycoprotein) serves to avoid destruction by the host's immune system. Cross and his laboratory researched the special genetic mechanisms that enable this variability (exchange of the genes involved and change of the location of gene expression, which is coded at telomeric sites ).
In 1984 he received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize . In 1978 he received the Fleming Prize of the Society of General Microbiology and in 1983 the Chalmers Memorial Medal of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In 1998 he received the Leeuwenhoek Medal from the Royal Society . He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1984.
He is a US citizen. Cross has been married since 1986 and has one daughter.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Birth and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cross, George AM |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cross, George Alan Martin (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British-American molecular biologist and parasitologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 27, 1942 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cheshire |