Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA
Gary Ruvkun is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard
Medical School. His lab uses C. elegans molecular
genetics and genomics to study problems in developmental
biology and physiology. Dr. Ruvkun is a graduate
of UC Berkeley and Harvard. His PhD thesis with
Fred Ausubel explored the symbiotic nitrogen fixation
genes of Rhizobium. A hallmark of those genes is
their conservation over 3 billion years of prokaryotic
evolution. Dr. Ruvkun began to work with C. elegans
as a postdoc with Bob Horvitz at MIT and Walter
Gilbert at Harvard, where he explored the genes
that control the temporal dimension of development.
This work led to the discovery of the first microRNA
genes, and the first detection of microRNA genes
in other animals, and the discovery of a relationship
with RNAi, now an exploding field. Over the past
few years, Dr. Ruvkun’s lab has discovered
that, like mammals, C. elegans uses an insulin signaling
pathway to control its metabolism and longevity.
This analysis has revealed striking congruence of
molecular mechanisms at many steps in the pathway,
and most importantly, new components also likely
to be ancient and universal. These discoveries have
implications for treatment of diabetes, a disease
of insulin signaling. Using RNAi libraries of nearly
every C. elegans gene, Dr. Ruvkun’s lab has
surveyed 17,000 genes for their action in regulation
of longevity, fat deposition, and RNAi. This analysis
gives a global view of the molecular machines that
operate in these pathways. Dr. Ruvkun has also analysed
the complete C. elegans genome sequence for conserved
microRNA and mRNA coding genes. The genome sequence
reveals universals in developmental control that
are the legacy of metazoan complexity before the
Cambrian explosion as well as probable developmental
control genes that have been more recently invented
or lost in particular phylogenic lineages. The scientific
value of the cartography of these genes is in the
power to explain universal features of animal development
as well as features that are particular to invertebrates
or nematodes. |
