Gerald Joyce

Gerald Francis Joyce (born November 28, 1956 in Manhattan (Kansas) ) is an American biochemist. He researches the biochemical mechanisms at the origin of life on earth and carried out pioneering experiments on artificial genetic systems.

Live and act

Joyce graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in 1978 and the University of California, San Diego , where he received his PhD in nucleic acids in 1984. As a post-doctoral student he was at the Salk Institute and from 1989 assistant professor in the chemistry and molecular biology department of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. In 1992 he became associate professor there and in 1996 professor. From 2006 to 2011 he was Dean of his faculty at the Scripps Institute. During this time a branch was established in Jupiter, Florida.

In 2009, he and Tracey Lincoln carried out an experiment in which two RNA enzymes ( ribozymes that create self-copies of RNA strands) catalyzed each other. No proteins or cellular components were necessary, just a primordial soup of oligonucleotides . They showed exponential growth and doubled their population in about 1 hour. The enzymes emerged from evolutionary experiments in which a number of (artificially produced) enzymes competed with one another in the struggle for survival. It started with enzyme forms that also occur in nature, but which changed significantly in the course of the experiments.

He has carried out in-vitro experiments on RNA reproduction since the 1990s, but with the participation of proteins as enzymes.

In 1987 he and colleagues investigated alternatives to a scenario in which ribonucleic acid systems capable of self-catalysis were the origin of life ( RNA world hypothesis ), which was unlikely for various reasons, as the authors explained at the time.

Awards

In 1994 Joyce received the Molecular Biology Award from the National Academy of Sciences and in 1995 the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry . In 1997 he received the Hans Sigrist Prize and the Herbert W. Dickerman Award. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2001) and received the NAS Award in Early Earth and Life Sciences (Stanley Miller Medal) in 2010 for pioneering experiments on self-organized replication and evolution of RNA enzymes (ribozymes) that shed light on the origin of life . In 2009 he was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Web links

Joyce Lab
Michael Marshall: The secret of how life on earth began , on: BBC - Earth, October 31, 2016

Individual evidence

↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
↑ Tracey A. Lincoln, Gerald F. Joyce: Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme , Science, Volume 323, 2009, pp. 1229-1232, abstract .
↑ Ronald Breaker, Joyce: Emergence of a replicating species from an in vitro RNA evolution reaction , Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 91, 1994, pp. 6093-6097.
↑ Joyce, Alan W. Schwartz, Stanley L. Miller , Leslie E. Orgel : The case for an ancestral genetic system involving simple analogues of the nucleotides , Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 84, 1987, pp. 4398-4402, PNAS Online .

personal data
SURNAME	Joyce, Gerald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Joyce, Gerald Francis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH	November 28, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH	Manhattan, Kansas

[1] Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004

[2] Tracey A. Lincoln, Gerald F. Joyce: Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme , Science, Volume 323, 2009, pp. 1229-1232, abstract .

[3] Ronald Breaker, Joyce: Emergence of a replicating species from an in vitro RNA evolution reaction , Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 91, 1994, pp. 6093-6097.

[4] Joyce, Alan W. Schwartz, Stanley L. Miller , Leslie E. Orgel : The case for an ancestral genetic system involving simple analogues of the nucleotides , Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 84, 1987, pp. 4398-4402, PNAS Online .