Jon Beckwith

Jonathan Roger Beckwith ( born December 25, 1935 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American biochemist, microbiologist and geneticist. In 1969 he became the first isolation of a single gene from a bacterium (Escherichia coli).

The laboratory of Jon Beckwith research at the Institute of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston / USA even today in these bacteria, predominantly on membrane proteins, including about their role in cell division.

Career

After graduating from high school in Newton, Massachusetts, (1953 ) studied Jon Beckwith chemistry from Harvard University and was there in 1961 the examination for his PhD in biochemistry. Through a grant from the U.S. Federal Health Office ( National Institutes of Health, NIH ), he came after, inter alia, to Princeton (New Jersey), London, Cambridge (England ) and to the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

1965 Beckwith returned back to Harvard, the Institute of Bacteriology and Immunology, Harvard Medical School, where he ascended the academic ladder quickly and was appointed professor in 1969. He was awarded the 1980 Research Professor of the American Cancer Society and in 1984 the membership of the Academy of Sciences of the United States.

After many awards and honorary memberships Jon Beckwith received the 1993 Genetics Society of America Medal. He was in 2005 for his life's work of " Abbott Lifetime Achievement Award" from the American Society for Microbiology awarded. In 2009 he received the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology of the National Academy of Sciences. His correct service name is: Cancer Society Research Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Scientific and social commitment

Jon Beckwith teaches genetics and research in the field of genetics of bacteria, among other things, gene expression, protein synthesis and the transport of proteins through cell membranes, and also for the construction of cell membranes and their transformation during cell division.

Since 1969, he also became involved in public debates about the social impact of genetics, as in the group " Science for the People" and the " Genetic Screening Study Group ". This loose association of Harvard researchers criticized inter alia the narrowed on the genes of view of many sociobiologists and the slope of many genetic researchers to genetic determinism, which, for example, in studies of alleged " genes for criminal behavior " show or in the assertion that men are due to their genes in the field of mathematics superior to women.

Jon Beckwith is also among those researchers who specifically deal with the ethical implications of the Human Genome Project and repeated before a genetic discrimination warned that could arise when information would be used for genetic testing, for example, of health insurance to the detriment of the insured.