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Marine Biological Laboratory adjunct scientist and Corporation Member Matthew Meselson
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MBL Scientist Matthew Meselson Receives Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science
The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation of New York has awarded Marine Biological Laboratory adjunct scientist and Corporation Member, Matthew Meselson, the 2004 Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science. The Award honors Meselson “for a lifetime career that combines penetrating discovery in molecular biology with creative leadership in public policy aimed at eliminating chemical and biological weapons.”
The Lasker Awards are the nation’s most distinguished honor for outstanding contributions to basic and clinical medical research. Often called “America’s Nobel,” the Lasker Award has been presented to 68 scientists who went on to receive the Nobel Prize. Meselson received a $25,000 honorarium and a statuette of the Winged Victory of Samothrace at an awards ceremony held on October 1, in New York City.
A stunning achievement of Meselson’s early career had its beginnings at the MBL. In the summer of 1954, while working alongside James Watson as a research assistant, Meselson met Franklin Stahl, a post-doctoral fellow who was a student in the Physiology course. That summer, the two young scientists began discussing possible experiments that would prove or disprove Watson and Francis Crick’s model of semi-conservative DNA replication.
In the years that followed, Meselson and Stahl carried out what is now known in the scientific world as the Meselson-Stahl experiment; in 1958 they showed that DNA duplication produces two identical daughter molecules, each containing one parent and one newly formed strand. Their results verified, for the first time, that the predictions of Watson and Crick were correct.
In the process of conducting the now famous experiment, Meselson invented an important laboratory technique called equilibrium density gradient centrifugation, which allowed him to distinguish between DNA molecules of different densities. The procedure played an important role in Meselson’s subsequent DNA research, and proved a critical tool for other scientists doing work in the then burgeoning field of molecular biology.
“In the early days of molecular biology, Matthew Meselson laid the biochemical groundwork for several key areas: DNA replication, DNA repair, DNA recombination, and DNA restriction,” noted Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, former Lasker and Nobel Prize winner and chairman of the international jury of researchers that selects Lasker Award recipients. “He is revered by his scientific colleagues for carrying out the Meselson-Stahl experiment, which pointed to the correctness of the prediction of the Watson and Crick model for the replication of DNA. This experiment has remained a classic in molecular biology for more than four decades, and has been referred to as ‘the most beautiful experiment in biology.’”
Besides his work in molecular biology, Meselson, a Harvard professor since 1960, has dedicated much of his career to the elimination of chemical and biological weapons and has served as an advisor on these subjects to various U.S. government agencies. Meselson currently co-directs the Harvard Sussex Program, a collaborative effort between Harvard University and the University of Sussex, which promotes communication and training in support of informed public policy regarding chemical and biological warfare.
Today, more than 50 years after his first summer in Woods Hole, the MBL continues to play an important role Meselson’s scientific pursuits, which now focus on molecular genetics and evolution. In 2001 Meselson established a satellite laboratory in the MBL’s Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, where he is trying to unravel the mystery behind one of the most perplexing questions in biology: What drives the early extinction of asexual organisms, and why it can be averted by sexual reproduction?
“We love the fact that Matt’s at the MBL,” says Bay Paul Center director Mitchell Sogin. “He brings a presence here, an intellectual excitement. Matt came up during a golden era of molecular biology. His early contributions to the literature are textbook famous. Matt recreates the spirit of that era and it’s infectious, for his students and for the rest of us in the Center.”
At the Bay Paul Center, Meselson and his colleagues Jessica and David Mark Welch study the bdelloid rotifer, a microscopic animal that appears to have given up sex 50 million years ago, yet has evolved over that time into more than 350 described species. By comparing the genomes of bdelloids with their sexual relatives, Meselson hopes to uncover what has allowed the animals to evolve successfully without sex. The resolution of this question is likely to have far-reaching impact on the current understanding of basic biological and evolutionary processes.
“The MBL, in particular Mitch Sogin and the Bay Paul Center, have provided a stimulating intellectual environment for me, David Mark Welch, and Jessica Mark Welch in our work with bdelloid rotifers,” says Meselson. “The Bay Paul Center provides us with high throughput DNA sequencing facilities and computing facilities not available to me at Harvard. Because of this, postdoctoral fellows and students from my Harvard Lab often journey to Woods Hole to pursue their research. Without the Bay Paul Center, and Mitch Sogin’s generous hospitality and interest, we would be seriously disadvantaged.”
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