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| Vol. 22, No. 22 |
| December 1, 2000 |
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DeBakey Awards Honor Outstanding Scientists By LYNN FOLTIN Baylor College of Medicine
Winners of the annual Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Awards were recognized recently during an awards ceremony and seminar at Baylor College of Medicine. Honored for their outstanding contributions to biomedical research were Drs. Richard Gibbs, William E. Brownell, Gerard Karsenty and joint winners, Drs. Stephen Joseph Elledge and J. Wade Harper. Following the awards presentation, recipients presented summaries of their award-winning research. Dr. Gibbs, a professor of molecular and human genetics and director of the Baylor Human Genome Sequencing Center, presented Baylor College of Medicine and the Human Genome Project. He received the award for his contributions to the Human Genome Project, an international consortium that generated a draft DNA sequence of the human genome. Dr. Brownell, a professor in the Departments of Otorhinolaryngology and Communicative Sciences, and Neuroscience, presented Mechanical Work by Outer Hair Cell Membranes. He received the award for his research in membrane biophysics. The Brownell laboratory developed a model of membrane-based force transduction involving nanoscale membrane ripples in the outer hair cell. This model helps explain the remarkable frequency selectivity of mammalian hearing, which is based on the feedback of mechanical energy on inner ear vibrations. Dr. Karsenty, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, presented Molecular Genetics as a Tool to Study Human Physiology and Diseases. He received the award for his bone formation research, in which he explored why obesity inhibits bone loss while menopause favors it. His study provided a molecular explanation of these two observations by showing that body weight, reproduction, and bone formation are regulated through the same neuroendocrine loop. Dr. Elledge, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and Dr. Harper, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry, presented The Mechanism of Regulated Protein Stability: Discovery of the SCF Ubiquitin Ligase Pathway. The award is based on their studies of the fundamental mechanisms of regulated protein breakdown. They discovered a modular ubiquitin ligase system, which is responsible for the regulated destruction of possibly thousands of proteins. Mutations in components of this system are implicated in cancer and developmental abnormalities. Moreover, viruses such as HIV have been found to co-opt these ubiquitin ligase pathways in order to subvert normal control mechanisms in the cell. Each winner received a Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research medallion and an unrestricted fund in support of their research program, along with a celebration dinner for each laboratory. Nominations are based on significant published contributions to clinical or basic biomedical research during the past three years.
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