Craig Mello
Craig Cameron Mello ( born October 18, 1960 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American biochemist and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
Life
Mello earned his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry in 1982 from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology in 1990 at Harvard University. He then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center before he joined in 1994 as a professor of molecular medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University of Massachusetts. In addition, he has held the position of an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In 1998, he discovered along with Andrew Z. Fire RNA interference to in eukaryotic cells to turn genes on or off. It is an important method in biomedical research to study the function of individual genes. In addition, there have been attempts to use of RNA interference for therapeutic purposes.
Awards
- 2003: National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology
- 2003: Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences
- 2004: Warren Triennial Prize of the Massachusetts General Hospital, along with Andrew Fire
- 2005: Gairdner Foundation International Award, along with Andrew Fire
- 2005: Dr. Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science
- 2005 Massry Prize, along with Andrew Z. Fire
- 2005: Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
- 2006: Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research for the discovery of RNA interference and its biological functions
- 2006: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Andrew Fire