Joseph G. Gall

Joseph Grafton Gall ( born April 14, 1928 in Washington, DC) is an American zoologist and cell biologist.

Life

Gall acquired in 1949 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, a bachelor, and in 1952 a Ph.D. in zoology. First teaching duties, he took over until 1963 at the University of Minnesota before he accepted a visiting professorship at Yale. He later received a full professor of Biology and Molecular Biophysics, a position he held until 1983, before moving to Baltimore to the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Here he received in 1984 the American Cancer Society Professor of Developmental Genetics.

Work

Gall has dealt in the course of his scientific career with numerous structures of the cell nucleus, including the lampbrush chromosomes. He was able to show that these chromosomes consist of a single DNA double strand and postulated that this should apply to all chromosomes. Gall showed that nuclear pores have a structure with eight -fold symmetry. Together with Mary Lou Pardue enjoyed decisive work on the development of in situ hybridization. Another project dealt with the role of ribosomal RNA or the structure of satellite DNA and its localization in centromeric heterochromatin. Gall could make important contributions to the study of the first gene amplification. Together with his postdoctoral fellow Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol W. Greider and her PhD student found Gall telomeres of Tetrahymena; among other things, for this work Blackburn and Greider were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Recent work Galls concerned with the function and structure of Cajal bodies, a further structure of the nucleus.

Gall is one of the founding members of the American Society for Cell Biology ( ASCB ) and was 1967/1968 its president. Three of his students, Mary Lou Pardue, Susan Gerbi and Elizabeth Blackburn took over later this function. Under Gall's students being unusually large number of women who occasionally Gall 's Gals ( " Galls Girls " ) were called. Many of his students later received important positions at universities and research institutions worldwide.

Gall is considered excellent user of many forms of microscopy and an expert on the history of microscopy.

Awards (selection)

451795
de