Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner, CH ( born January 13, 1927 in Germiston, South Africa ) is a British biologist who, together with H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2002. The researchers were honored for their work in the field of " genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death ."

Brenner, was born as the son of Jewish immigrants in Germiston, South Africa, studied at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa Medicine and completed his doctorate in 1954 at Exeter College, Oxford University in the subject " Physical Chemistry ". After a short time in a chemical laboratory in 1956, he moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. There he devoted himself to the molecular biology and was in 1979, also head of the relevant department, seven years later, he became director of the molecular genetics department of the Institute, which he directed until 1991. From 1996 to 2000 he did research as President and Director of Science at the molecular Scientific Institute La Jolla and Berkeley, California. Currently, he is working at Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.

Brenner established the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism and studied the organ development and the development of the nervous system. Using C. elegans and the first genes, which play an important role in apoptosis have been described. Already in the 1960s, he had contributed to the elucidation of the genetic code, when he discovered the frameshift mutations, together with colleagues.

Awards

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