| Renato Dulbecco |
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Information AboutRenato Dulbecco |
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He was born in Catanzaro (Southern Italy ) from a Calabrese mother and a Ligurian father. He graduated from high school at 16, then moved to the University Of Turin . Despite a strong interest for Mathematics and Physics , he decided to study Medicine . At only 22, he graduated in morbid Anatomy and Pathology under the supervision of professor Giuseppe Levi . During these years he met Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini , whose friendship and encouragement would later bring him to the USA . In 1936 he was called up for military service as a medical officer, and later ( 1938 ) discharged. In 1940 Italy entered WWII and Dulbecco was recalled and sent to the front in France and Russia , where he was wounded. After hospitalization and the collapse of Fascism , he joined the Resistance against the German Occupation . After the war he resumed his work at Levi's Laboratory , but soon he moved, together with Levi-Montalcini, to the USA, where, in Bloomington , Indiana , he worked with Salvador Luria on Bacteriophage s. In the summer of 1949 he moved to Caltech , joining Max Delbrück 's group. There he started his studies about Animal Oncovirus es. In the late 1950s he took Howard Temin as a student, with whom, and David Baltimore , he would later share the 1975 Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine for "their discoveries concerning the interaction between Tumour Virus es and the Genetic material of the Cell ". In 1962 he moved to the Salk Institute and then in 1972 to The Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London . In 1986 he was among the Scientist s who launched the Human Genome Project . In 1993 he moved back to Italy, where he is currently president of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies at C.N.R. (National Council of Research) in Milan . WHY WAS HE AWARDED THE NOBEL PRIZE? Dulbecco and his group demonstrated that the infection of normal cells with certain types of viruses (oncoviruses) led to the incorporation of virus-derived Gene s into the host-cell Genome , and that this event lead to the transformation (the acquisition of a tumor Phenotype ) of those cells. As demonstrated by Temin and Baltimore, who shared the Nobel Prize with Dulbecco, the transfer of viral genes to the cell is mediated by an Enzyme called Reverse Transcriptase (or, more precisely, RNA-dependent DNA Polymerase ), which replicates the viral genome (in this case made of RNA ) into DNA , which is later incorporated in the host genome. Oncoviruses are the cause of some forms of Human Cancer s. Dulbecco's study gave us the basis for precise understanding of the Molecular mechanisms by which they propagate, thus allowing us to better fight them. Furthermore, the mechanisms of Carcinogenesis mediated by oncoviruses closely resemble the process by which normal cells degenerate into cancer cells. Dulbecco's discoveries allowed us to better understand and fight cancer. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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