Andrew Fire facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Andrew Fire
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Fire in 2008
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Andrew Zachary Fire
April 27, 1959 Palo Alto, California, U.S.
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| Education | University of California, Berkeley Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | RNA interference |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Pathology, genetics |
| Institutions | Johns Hopkins University Stanford University MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology |
| Thesis | In vitro transcription studies of adenovirus (1983) |
| Doctoral advisor | Phillip Allen Sharp |
| Notable students | Jenny Hsieh |
Andrew Zachary Fire (born April 27, 1959) is an American scientist who studies biology and genetics. He is a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2006, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Craig C. Mello. They won for discovering something called RNA interference (RNAi). This important discovery helps us understand how genes work. They did this research at the Carnegie Institution for Science and shared their findings in 1998.
About Andrew Fire
Andrew Z. Fire was born in Palo Alto, California. He grew up in Sunnyvale, California. He went to the University of California, Berkeley and earned a degree in mathematics when he was 19. After that, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned his Ph.D. in biology in 1983. His mentor there was Phillip Sharp, who also won a Nobel Prize.
After MIT, Fire moved to Cambridge, England. He worked as a researcher at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. This group was led by another Nobel Prize winner, Sydney Brenner.
From 1986 to 2003, Fire worked at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Maryland. This is where he and his team made their big discovery about how double-stranded RNA can turn off genes. In 2003, he joined the faculty at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Andrew Fire has received support for his research from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Fire is a member of important science groups. These include the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Nobel Prize Discovery
In 2006, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They won for their work first published in 1998 in the science journal Nature.
Fire and Mello, along with their team, found something amazing. They discovered that tiny pieces of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) could "switch off" specific genes. Imagine genes as instructions for building things in our bodies. When dsRNA is present, it causes the cell to destroy the "messenger RNA" (mRNA) that carries these instructions. If the mRNA is destroyed, the instructions can't be read. This means the cell can't make the protein that the gene was supposed to build.
They also found that dsRNA was much better at turning off genes than other methods. Only a small amount of dsRNA was needed to see a big effect. This suggested that a special process was happening, almost like a chain reaction. Later research proved this idea was correct.
The Nobel Prize committee said that Fire and Mello "discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information." This means they found a basic way that our bodies control how our genes work. Nick Hastie, a director at the Medical Research Council, said:
It is very unusual for a piece of work to completely revolutionise the whole way we think about biological processes and regulation, but this has opened up a whole new field in biology.
This discovery changed how scientists think about biology. It opened up a whole new area of study.
Awards and Honors
Andrew Fire has received many important awards for his work. Here are some of them:
- Meyenburg Prize in 2002
- National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology in 2003 (with Craig Mello)
- Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences from Rockefeller University in 2003 (with Craig Mello, Thomas Tuschl and David Baulcombe)
- Elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2004
- Brandeis University's Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Medical Research in 2005 (with Victor Ambros, Craig Mello, and Gary Ruvkun)
- Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2005 (with Craig Mello)
- Massry Prize in 2005 (with Craig Mello and David Baulcombe)
- Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize in 2006 (with Craig Mello)
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006 (with Craig Mello)
See also
In Spanish: Andrew Fire para niños
- History of RNA biology
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates
- List of RNA biologists
