Dyann F. Wirth (born Dyann Lynn Fergus, January 31, 1951,

Racine, Wisconsin Racine ( ) is a city in Racine County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River (Wisconsin), Root River, south of Milwaukee and north of Chicago. It is the List ...

) is an American immunologist. She is currently the Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Infectious Diseases at

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...

. Wirth is one of the world's leading malariologists, dealing with how the genus ''

Plasmodium ''Plasmodium'' is a genus of unicellular eukaryotes that are obligate parasites of vertebrates and insects. The life cycles of ''Plasmodium'' species involve development in a Hematophagy, blood-feeding insect host (biology), host which then inj ...

'' has evolved in terms of population biology, drug resistance, and antigenicity. The Wirth laboratory combines the expertise of the Harvard School of Public Health, the

Broad Institute The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (IPA: , pronunciation respelling: ), often referred to as the Broad Institute, is a biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The institu ...

, and international collaborators for malaria research and training in public health.

Education and career

Wirth received her B.A. from the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

and her Ph.D. from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1978.

Research

Wirth's lab identified the

cytochrome B Cytochrome b is a protein found in the membranes of aerobic cells. In eukaryotic mitochondria (inner membrane) and in aerobic prokaryotes, cytochrome b is a component of respiratory chain complex III () — also known as the bc1 complex or ubiq ...

gene of the

avian malaria Avian malaria is a parasitic disease of birds, caused by parasite species belonging to the genera ''Plasmodium'' and '' Hemoproteus'' (phylum Apicomplexa, class Haemosporidia, family Plasmoiidae). The disease is transmitted by a dipteran vector in ...

species ''

Plasmodium gallinaceum ''Plasmodium gallinaceum'' is a species of the genus ''Plasmodium'' (subgenus ''Haemamoeba'') that causes malaria in poultry. Description This species was described by Emile Brumpt, Alexandre Joseph Emile Brumpt (1877–1951) a French professo ...

'' in 1989, as genetic study of the parasite was in its early days. In 1993 the labs of Wirth and Kamini Nirmala Mendis published the first successful use of the

electroporation Electroporation, also known as electropermeabilization, is a microbiological and biotechnological technique in which an electric field is applied to cells to briefly increase the permeability of the cell membrane. The application of a high-vo ...

method to insert new DNA sequence into a malaria cell (also ''

'').

Awards and honors

Wirth was awarded the

American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) is an Arlington, Virginia-based non-profit organization of scientists, clinicians, students and program professionals whose longstanding mission is to promote global health through the ...

's Bailey K. Ashford Medal, given for distinguished work in tropical medicine, in 1995, and the Joseph Augustin LePrince Medal, for contributions to malariology, in 2015. In 2016, she was elected as a fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In 2021 she was awarded the

Walter Reed Medal The Walter Reed Medal may refer to the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Major Walter Reed in 1929, or a medal currently awarded by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. ----The Walter Reed Medal was established by the Amer ...

Selected publications

* ''Synthesis and processing of the Sindbis virus structural proteins'', 1978 * ''Malaria : Natural Selection and New Medicine'', 2010 * ''Malaria : biology in the era of eradication'', 2016

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wirth, Dyann 1951 births Living people American immunologists Malariologists Fellows of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene American women scientists 21st-century American women Presidents of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Members of the National Academy of Medicine Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology