Jonathan Roger Beckwith (born December 25, 1935, in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

) is an American

microbiologist A microbiologist (from Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, fungi, and some types of par ...

and

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic process ...

. He is the

American Cancer Society The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. The ACS publishes the journals ''Cancer'', '' CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians'' and '' Cancer Cytopathology''. History The society w ...

Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

in Boston, Massachusetts.

Biography

He trained with

Sydney Brenner Sydney Brenner (13 January 1927 – 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to wo ...

Arthur Pardee Arthur Beck Pardee (July 13, 1921 – February 24, 2019) was an American biochemist. One biographical portrait begins "Among the titans of science, Arthur Pardee is especially intriguing." There is hardly a field of molecular biology that is not ...

, and

François Jacob François Jacob (; 17 June 1920 – 19 April 2013) was a French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through regulation of transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel ...

at the

Institut Pasteur The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. T ...

in France before arriving at Harvard University.

Research

Beckwith led the research group that in 1969 isolated the first

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

from a bacterial chromosome. Some of the researchers worked in the Beckwith laboratory at the Harvard Medical School and consisted of several now well-known scientists and doctors including James A. Shapiro and

Lawrence Eron Lawrence Eron is an infectious diseases specialist practicing in Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is ...

, MD.; others (Lorne MacHattie and Garret Ihler) were located in the laboratory of Charles Thomas. The procedure used was devised by Garret Ihler and Karin Ippen. Complementary strands of the gene, carried within non-complementary strands of viral DNA, from viruses transducing the gene in reverse orientations which had been separated by a poly U,G density-gradient technique, were annealed to form double-stranded DNA. The single-stranded DNA was then removed using a single-strand specific DNase under investigation in the Thomas laboratory, leaving the double-stranded gene intact. The elegant electron micrographs of the pre- and post-digested DNA were taken by MacHatty in the Thomas laboratory. Before and following this experiment, Beckwith made important contributions to the study of

bacterial genetics Bacterial genetics is the subfield of genetics devoted to the study of bacterial genes. Bacterial genetics are subtly different from eukaryotic genetics, however bacteria still serve as a good model for animal genetic studies. One of the major dis ...

. His studies include the mechanisms of protein secretion,

disulfide bond In chemistry, a disulfide (or disulphide in British English) is a compound containing a functional group or the anion. The linkage is also called an SS-bond or sometimes a disulfide bridge and usually derived from two thiol groups. In inor ...

formation, and cell division. In addition, he is a prominent speaker on the social implications of science and has been an activist in science. He spoke out against the testing of boys for XYY chromosomes and was a member of the ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications) committee of the

Human Genome Project The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...

initiated by

James D. Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper in ''Nature'' proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Wats ...

. He has worked on issues of

social responsibility Social responsibility is an ethical concept in which a person works and cooperates with other people and organizations for the benefit of the community. An organization can demonstrate social responsibility in several ways, for instance, by do ...

in science and since 1983 has taught a course on the Social Issues in Biology at Harvard University, one of the first of its kind. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1986.

Honors

In 2005 he received the Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award from the

American Society for Microbiology The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), originally the Society of American Bacteriologists, is a professional organization for scientists who study viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and protozoa as well as other aspects of microbiology. It wa ...

for "sustained, remarkable contributions to the microbiological sciences". Beckwith was the 2009 recipient of the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

. Beckwith is a member of the

Selected publications

* *

References

;Notes ;Bibliography *

External links

* *
Jonathan R. Beckwith papers, 1933-2011 (inclusive), 1965-2004 (bulk). H MS c370. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.The story of the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA
1935 births American biochemists Living people Harvard Medical School faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American geneticists American microbiologists Jewish American scientists Harvard Medical School alumni 21st-century American Jews {{US-biologist-stub