Renato Dulbecco facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Renato Dulbecco
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| Born | February 22, 1914 Catanzaro, Italy
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| Died | February 19, 2012 (aged 97) |
| Nationality | Italian, American |
| Alma mater | University of Turin |
| Known for | Reverse transcriptase |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Virologist |
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| Doctoral students | Howard Temin |
Renato Dulbecco (born February 22, 1914 – died February 19, 2012) was an Italian-American virologist. A virologist is a scientist who studies viruses. He won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He received this award for his important work on oncoviruses. These are special viruses that can cause cancer when they infect animal cells.
Renato Dulbecco studied at the University of Turin in Italy. He was taught by a professor named Giuseppe Levi. Two of his classmates, Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini, also became famous scientists. They all moved to the United States and later won Nobel Prizes too. During World War II, Dulbecco was a soldier in the Italian army. After being wounded, he joined the resistance movement. This group fought against the German occupation.
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Early Life and Education
Renato Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro, a city in southern Italy. He grew up in Imperia, a city on the coast. He finished high school when he was only 16 years old. After that, he went to the University of Turin.
Even though he was very interested in mathematics and physics, he chose to study medicine. At 22, he finished his studies in pathology. This is the study of diseases. During his time at university, he became friends with Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini. Their friendship later encouraged him to move to the United States.
In 1936, he served in the military as a medical officer. When Italy joined World War II in 1940, he was called back to serve. He was sent to fight in France and Russia. He was wounded during the war. After recovering, he joined the resistance movement. This group worked against the German forces occupying Italy.
Scientific Career and Discoveries
After the war, Dulbecco went back to working in Giuseppe Levi's laboratory. Soon after, he moved to the United States with Rita Levi-Montalcini. In the U.S., he worked at Indiana University with Salvador Luria. They studied bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria.
In 1949, he moved to Caltech. There, he joined a research group led by Max Delbrück. In the early 1950s, Dulbecco found a new way to study animal viruses. He developed a method to count them precisely. This was similar to a method used for bacterial viruses. This new technique helped scientists study animal viruses much better. He used this method to study the poliovirus.
These achievements led to him becoming a full professor at Caltech. He then began studying oncoviruses. These are viruses that can cause cancer in animals. In the late 1950s, Howard Temin became his student. Dulbecco, Temin, and David Baltimore later shared the 1975 Nobel Prize. They won for their discoveries about how tumor viruses interact with the genetic material inside cells.
Dulbecco also worked with Marguerite Vogt for many years. In 1962, he moved to the Salk Institute. Later, in 1972, he moved to the London Research Institute in the United Kingdom. Like many Italian scientists of his time, Dulbecco did not have a PhD. This degree did not exist in the Italian education system until 1980.
In 1986, he was one of the scientists who started the Human Genome Project. This huge project aimed to map all the genes in humans. From 1993 to 1997, he returned to Italy. He became the president of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies in Milan. He also kept his position at the Salk Institute.
Dulbecco continued to research cancer until late 2011. He studied how certain cells, called cancer stem cells, can cause tumors. His work suggested that even one of these special cells might be enough to start cancer. He believed that changes in a cell's genes could lead to cancer.
Nobel Prize-Winning Work
Renato Dulbecco and his team made a very important discovery. They showed that when normal cells are infected with certain viruses (oncoviruses), the virus's genes become part of the cell's own genome. This process makes the normal cells change into tumor cells.
Howard Temin and David Baltimore, who shared the Nobel Prize with Dulbecco, found out how this happens. A special enzyme called reverse transcriptase helps transfer the viral genes. This enzyme copies the virus's genetic material (which is RNA) into DNA. This new DNA then gets added to the host cell's DNA.
Oncoviruses are known to cause some types of human cancers. Dulbecco's research helped scientists understand exactly how these viruses work. This knowledge has been very important in fighting cancer. Also, the way oncoviruses cause cancer is similar to how normal cells become cancerous. So, Dulbecco's discoveries helped us understand cancer in general.
His work also led to important advances in fighting HIV. This is the virus that causes AIDS. In the 1980s and 1990s, understanding reverse transcriptase helped create the first successful drugs against HIV. These drugs are called reverse-transcriptase inhibitors. They are still used today as part of treatments for HIV.
Other Awards and Honors
Renato Dulbecco received many other awards for his scientific work.
- In 1965, he received the Marjory Stephenson Prize.
- In the same year, he was chosen to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- In 1973, he won the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. He shared this award with Theodore Puck and Harry Eagle.
- In 1974, he received the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology. This award is given by the National Academy of Sciences.
- Also in 1974, he became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS).
- In 1993, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
See also
In Spanish: Renato Dulbecco para niños
