| Renato Dulbecco |
|
| Born |
February 22, 1914(1914-02-22)
Catanzaro, Italy |
| Died |
February 19, 2012(2012-02-19) (aged 97)
La Jolla, California |
| Residence |
Milan, La Jolla |
| Nationality |
Italy, United States[1] |
| Fields |
Virologist |
| Institutions |
California Institute of Technology
Salk Institute
London Research Institute |
| Alma mater |
University of Turin |
| Known for |
Reverse transcriptase |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1975)
Selman A. Waksman Award (1974) |
Renato Dulbecco (February 22, 1914 – February 19, 2012) was an Italian-born American virologist who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on reverse transcriptase, which viruses use to translate their RNA into DNA inside the cells they infect. [2][3][4][5]
In 1973 he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Theodore Puck and Harry Eagle. Dulbecco was the recipient of the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the National Academy of Sciences in 1974.[6]
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Contents
- 1 Early life
- 2 Scientific career
- 3 See also
- 4 References
- 5 External links
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Early life
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This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability. |
Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro (Southern Italy) to a Calabrese mother and a Ligurian father. He graduated from high school at 16, then moved to the University of Turin. Despite a strong interest for mathematics and physics, he decided to study medicine. At only 22, he graduated in morbid anatomy and pathology under the supervision of professor Giuseppe Levi. During these years he met Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini, whose friendship and encouragement would later bring him to the United States. In 1936 he was called up for military service as a medical officer, and later (1938) discharged. In 1940 Italy entered World War II and Dulbecco was recalled and sent to the front in France and Russia, where he was wounded. After hospitalization and the collapse of Fascism, he joined the resistance against the German occupation.
Scientific career
After the war he resumed his work at Levi's laboratory, but soon he moved, together with Levi-Montalcini, to the U.S., where, in Bloomington, Indiana, he worked with Salvador Luria on bacteriophages. In the summer of 1949 he moved to Caltech, joining Max Delbrück's group. There he started his studies about animal oncoviruses.[7] In the late 1950s, he took Howard Temin as a student, with whom, and together with David Baltimore, he would later share the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell." Temin and Baltimore arrived at the discovery of reverse transcriptase simultaneously and independently from each other; although Dulbecco did not take direct part in either of their experiments, he had taught the two methods they used to make the discovery.[8]
Throughout this time he also worked with Marguerite Vogt. In 1962, he moved to the Salk Institute and then in 1972 to The Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now named the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute). In 1986 he was among the scientists who launched the Human Genome Project.[9][10][11] From 1993 to 1997 he moved back to Italy, where he was president of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies at C.N.R. (National Council of Research) in Milan. He also retained his position on the faculty of Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Dulbecco was actively involved in research into identification and characterization of mammary gland cancer stem cells until December 2011. [12] His research using a stem cell model system suggested that a single malignant cell with stem cell properties may be sufficient to induce cancer in mice and can generate distinct populations of tumor-initiating cells also with cancer stem cell properties. [13] Dulbecco's examinations into the origin of mammary gland cancer stem cells in solid tumors was a continuation of his early investigations of cancer being a disease of acquired mutations. His interest in cancer stem cells was strongly influenced by evidence that in addition to genomic mutations, epigenetic modification of a cell may contribute to the development or progression of cancer.
Nobel Prize
Dulbecco and his group demonstrated that the infection of normal cells with certain types of viruses (oncoviruses) led to the incorporation of virus-derived genes into the host-cell genome, and that this event lead to the transformation (the acquisition of a tumor phenotype) of those cells. As demonstrated by Temin and Baltimore, who shared the Nobel Prize with Dulbecco, the transfer of viral genes to the cell is mediated by an enzyme called reverse transcriptase (or, more precisely, RNA-dependent DNA polymerase), which replicates the viral genome (in this case made of RNA) into DNA, which is later incorporated in the host genome.
Oncoviruses are the cause of some forms of human cancers. Dulbecco's study gave a basis for a precise understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which they propagate, thus allowing humans to better fight them. Furthermore, the mechanisms of carcinogenesis mediated by oncoviruses closely resemble the process by which normal cells degenerate into cancer cells. Dulbecco's discoveries allowed humans to better understand and fight cancer.
See also
- History of RNA biology
- List of RNA biologists
- Dulbecco’s Modified Essential Medium
References
- ^ Dulbecco is a naturalized American citizen. See Dulbécco, Renato in www.treccani.it
- ^ Verma, Inder M. (2012). "Renato Dulbecco (1914–2012)". Nature 483 (7390): 408. doi:10.1038/483408a. edit
- ^ Eckhart, W. (2012). "Renato Dulbecco: Viruses, genes, and cancer". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1203513109. PMID 22411805. edit
- ^ Raju, T. N. (1999). "The Nobel chronicles. 1975: Renato Dulbecco (b 1914), David Baltimore (b 1938), and Howard Martin Temin (1934-94)". Lancet 354 (9186): 1308. PMID 10520671. edit
- ^ Kevles, D. J. (1993). "Renato Dulbecco and the new animal virology: Medicine, methods, and molecules". Journal of the history of biology 26 (3): 409–442. PMID 11613167. edit
- ^ "Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_waksman. Retrieved 15 February 2011.
- ^ Dulbecco, R (1976). "From the molecular biology of oncogenic DNA viruses to cancer". Science 192 (4238): 437–40. PMID 1257779.
- ^ Judson, Horace (2003-10-20). "No Nobel Prize for Whining". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C02E4DE123EF933A15753C1A9659C8B63. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
- ^ Dulbecco, R (1986). "A turning point in cancer research: Sequencing the human genome". Science 231 (4742): 1055–6. doi:10.1126/science.3945817. PMID 3945817.
- ^ PMID 37154669 (PubMed)
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- ^ Noll, H. (1986). "Sequencing the Human Genome". Science 233 (4760): 143–142. doi:10.1126/science.233.4760.143-b. PMID 3726524. edit
- ^ Zucchi, I.; Sanzone, S.; Astigiano, S.; Pelucchi, P.; Scotti, M.; Valsecchi, V.; Barbieri, O.; Bertoli, G. et al (2007). "The properties of a mammary gland cancer stem cell". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (25): 10476–10481. doi:10.1073/pnas.0703071104. PMC 1965538. PMID 17566110. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1965538. edit
- ^ Zucchi, I.; Astigiano, S.; Bertalot, G.; Sanzone, S.; Cocola, C.; Pelucchi, P.; Bertoli, G.; Stehling, M. et al (2008). "Distinct populations of tumor-initiating cells derived from a tumor generated by rat mammary cancer stem cells". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (44): 16940–16945. doi:10.1073/pnas.0808978105. PMC 2575224. PMID 18957543. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2575224. edit
External links
- Nobel autobiography
- Renato Dulbecco telling his story at Web of Stories
- The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
- Dulbecco's profile at the Salk Institute
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Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine (1951–1975)
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- Max Theiler (1951)
- Selman Waksman (1952)
- Hans Krebs / Fritz Lipmann (1953)
- John Enders / Thomas Weller / Frederick Robbins (1954)
- Hugo Theorell (1955)
- André Cournand / Werner Forssmann / Dickinson W. Richards (1956)
- Daniel Bovet (1957)
- George Beadle / Edward Tatum / Joshua Lederberg (1958)
- Severo Ochoa / Arthur Kornberg (1959)
- Frank Burnet / Peter Medawar (1960)
- Georg von Békésy (1961)
- Francis Crick / James D. Watson / Maurice Wilkins (1962)
- John Eccles / Alan Hodgkin / Andrew Huxley (1963)
- Konrad Bloch / Feodor Lynen (1964)
- François Jacob / André Lwoff / Jacques Monod (1965)
- Francis Rous / Charles B. Huggins (1966)
- Ragnar Granit / Haldan Hartline / George Wald (1967)
- Robert W. Holley / Har Khorana / Marshall Nirenberg (1968)
- Max Delbrück / Alfred Hershey / Salvador Luria (1969)
- Bernard Katz / Ulf von Euler / Julius Axelrod (1970)
- Earl Sutherland, Jr. (1971)
- Gerald Edelman / Rodney Porter (1972)
- Karl von Frisch / Konrad Lorenz / Nikolaas Tinbergen (1973)
- Albert Claude / Christian de Duve / George Palade (1974)
- David Baltimore / Renato Dulbecco / Howard Temin (1975)
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- Complete list
- (1901–1925)
- (1926–1950)
- (1951–1975)
- (1976–2000)
- (2001–2025)
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| Persondata |
| Name |
Dulbecco, Renato |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
|
| Date of birth |
February 22, 1914 |
| Place of birth |
Catanzaro |
| Date of death |
February 19, 2012 |
| Place of death |
La Jolla, California |
