Giuseppe Attardi
Giuseppe Maria Attardi ( born September 14, 1923 in Vicari, Italy, † April 5, 2008 in Altadena, United States) was an Italian- American geneticist at the California Institute of Technology.
Life
Attardi 1947 at the University of Padua, Doctor of Medicine. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at the Karolinska Institute near Stockholm, Sweden, and at Washington University in St. Louis, United States. Since 1963 he was a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech ). In 1974 he became a citizen of the United States. Attardi was married and had two children. His wife, Anne Chomyn was also a researcher at Caltech.
Work
Attardi worked with numerous sizes of medical- genetic research, including Nobel laureates James Watson, Francois Jacob and Renato Dulbecco.
1967 discovered Attardi mitochondrial RNA in humans, a little later mitochondrial ribosomes and in their genome encoded proteins. In 1981 he presented the genetic map and transcriptional map of the mitochondrial DNA. He described in 1983 there thirteen encrypted proteins belonging to all of the oxidative phosphorylation system, which leads to the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Attardi developed methods to elucidate the effects of mutations in the mitochondrial DNA on the cellular metabolism and their role in the pathogenesis of mitochondrial disorders. In 1999, he showed the importance of mitochondrial DNA and its mutations acquired during the course of life for the aging process. Attardi contributed significantly to the Mitochondrial Genome Project.