- Boris Ephrussi
Boris Ephrussi (
May 9 1901 –May 2 1979 ) was a French geneticist ofRussia n origin. He was one of the many famousJewish life scientists. He had published two papers in November 1966 which represented a key step in a decade of research in his laboratory. This research helped transformmammal ian, and especiallyhuman , genetics.Boris started his scientific training as a Russian
émigré in 1920. He studied the initiation and regulation ofembryo logical processes byintracellular andextracellular factors. A major strand of his early research concerned the effect of temperature on the development of fertilizedsea urchin eggs. In this work he used a micromanipulator, which was developed byRobert Chambers , an American biologist.During Ephrussi's time, writing a second
dissertation was standard practice in France. Ephrussi's involved culturing tissues.ref|1935a Ephrussi ran into difficulties typically associated with early tissue culture techniques, but despite these obstacles Ephrussi managed to conclude from studies ofbrachyury in mice that intrinsic factors (i.egenes ) play a key role in development.As the next phase of his
career , Ephrussi coupled his embryological concerns with a firm conviction that one must understand the role of genes in order to decipher embryological processes. He moved toCaltech in 1934 and stayed until 1935 to learn genetics within the intellectual empire ofT.H. Morgan . This move was supported by theRockefeller Foundation Fellowship . During this period he conducted important work withGeorge Beadle , who joined him inParis in the autumn of 1935. There they produced results from experiments with Drosophila eye transplants which became integral to the work of Beadle and Tatum, who were working withNeurospora , and from this research developed the 'one gene, one enzyme ' hypothesis.During
World War II , Ephrussi spent most of his time as arefugee at Johns Hopkins University. Following this he began work in France onyeast andcytoplasm ic genetics. He began working at theInstitut de Biologie Physicochimique (the Rothschild Institute) in Paris, and later worked at theCNRS atGif-sur-Yvette , where he studied the contribution of cytoplasm to the cellphenotype and pursued the interactions between nuclear and cytoplasmic genetic endowments necessary to the yielding of an intact, functioning (albeit single-celled)organism .Ephrussi continued to work on the topics he was primarily interested until the late 1970s. Topics covered included
*using hybrids with
teratoma s to explore determination and differentiation (e.g. "Finch and Ephrussi 1967"; "Kahan and Ephrussi 1970").
*negative regulation of differentiated function (e.g. "Davidson, Ephrussi and Yamamoto 1966"; "Fougbre, Ruiz and Ephrussi 1972").
*cellular and genetic biological approaches over a direct attack at the molecular level ("Ephrussi 1970", page 12).In 1974 Ephrussi won a
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize fromColumbia University . Ephrussi lived to see that transplantation was transforming into a genetic tool that would take on a new and more powerful aspect in the molecular era. However he died before seeing the genetic advances made by DNA recombination studies which had been set in motion by the studies he had undertaken. It can be said that Ephrussi was a pioneer of embryology and a main contributor to the reconciliation of modern genetics andEmbryology .Notes
see "Ephrussi 1935a"
External links
* [http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/horwitz/ The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize]
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