Susumu Tonegawa facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Susumu Tonegawa
|
|
|---|---|
Tonegawa early in his tenure at MIT
|
|
| Born | September 5, 1939 |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Antibody diversity E-box V(D)J recombination |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Genetics, Immunology, Neuroscience |
| Institutions | |
| Academic advisors |
|
Susumu Tonegawa (利根川 進, Tonegawa Susumu, born September 5, 1939) is a Japanese scientist. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine all by himself in 1987. This was for his amazing discovery about how our bodies make so many different antibodies. Antibodies are special proteins that help our immune system fight off germs.
Dr. Tonegawa found out about a process called V(D)J recombination. This is a special way our genes mix and match to create millions of different antibodies. Even though he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the immune system, he is also an expert in molecular biology. After winning the Nobel Prize, he started studying neuroscience. Now, he explores how our brains form and remember things.
Contents
Early life and education
Susumu Tonegawa was born in Nagoya, Japan. He went to Hibiya High School in Tokyo. When he was a student at Kyoto University, he became very interested in how genes are controlled. He read papers by famous scientists François Jacob and Jacques Monod. They inspired him to study molecular biology.
Tonegawa finished Kyoto University in 1963. At that time, there were not many places to study molecular biology in Japan. So, he moved to the University of California, San Diego. There, he worked on his doctorate degree with Dr. Masaki Hayashi. He earned his Ph.D. in 1968.
Career highlights
After getting his Ph.D., Tonegawa worked at the Salk Institute in San Diego. He was in the lab of Renato Dulbecco. Dr. Dulbecco encouraged him to move to the Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland in 1971. This is where Tonegawa switched from studying molecular biology to immunology. He did his most important work on the immune system there.
In 1981, Tonegawa became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1994, he became the first Director of the MIT Center for Learning and Memory. This center grew into The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory under his leadership. He stepped down as director in 2006. Today, he is a Picower Professor of Neuroscience and Biology. He is also a researcher for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
From 2009 to 2017, Tonegawa also led the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan.
Groundbreaking research
Understanding the immune system
Tonegawa's Nobel Prize-winning work solved a big mystery in immunology. Scientists had wondered for over 100 years how our adaptive immune system works. This system can create millions of different antibodies to fight off all sorts of germs. But how? We only have about 19,000 genes in our bodies.
Starting in 1976, Tonegawa did experiments that showed the answer. He found that our genetic material can rearrange itself. He compared the DNA of B cells in baby mice and adult mice. B cells are a type of white blood cell that makes antibodies. He saw that in adult mice, the genes in B cells had moved around. They had recombined and even deleted parts. This mixing and matching creates the huge variety of antibodies. This amazing process is now called V(D)J recombination.
In 1983, Tonegawa also found a special part of DNA that helps control antibody genes. This was the first time such a "gene enhancer" was discovered in cells.
Exploring the brain and memory
Soon after winning the Nobel Prize, Tonegawa changed his research focus again. He moved from immunology to neuroscience, the study of the brain. He has been working on this ever since.
His lab was a leader in using new technologies to study genes in mammals. They showed how important certain proteins are for forming memories. These include CaMKII (in 1992) and the NMDA receptor (in 1996).
Tonegawa's lab also found that certain parts of brain cells, called dendritic spines, might be a target for treating Fragile X Syndrome. This is a genetic condition that affects brain development. They showed that a single dose of a drug could greatly reduce symptoms in mice with this condition.
Tonegawa was one of the first to use optogenetics in neuroscience. This is a cool technique that uses light to control brain cells. This led to his amazing work on memory engram cells. In 2012, his lab showed that if they turned on specific brain cells in mice, the mice would remember a past event. This proved that memories are stored in specific groups of cells in the hippocampus. These groups are now often called memory engram cells.
His lab continues to use advanced tools to learn more about memory engram cells. They have found how these cells are involved in how we feel about memories. They also study how they relate to social memory and brain problems like depression and Alzheimer's disease. This research gives hope for new ways to treat human brain conditions in the future.
Personal life
Tonegawa lives in the Boston area with his wife, Mayumi Yoshinari Tonegawa. She used to be a director and interviewer for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). Now she is a freelance science writer. The Tonegawas have three children: Hidde, Hanna, and Satto (who passed away).
Tonegawa is a big fan of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. He even threw out the first pitch at one of their games in 2004. That was the year they won the World Series!
Awards and honors
- 1982 – Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
- 1983 – Gairdner Foundation International Award
- 1984 –
Order of Culture (Bunkakunsho), from the Emperor of Japan - 1984 – Foreign Associate, American Academy of Arts and Sciences of the United States
- 1986 – Foreign Associate, National Academy of Sciences of the United States
- 1986 – Robert Koch Prize
- 1987 – Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
- 1987 – Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
- 1995 – Honored on a stamp issued by Gambia
- 2004 – Honorary Degree, Kyoto University
- 2006 – Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science
- 2007 – RIKEN Fellow
- 2009 – Honorary Degree, City University of Hong Kong
- 2010 – David M. Bonner Lifetime Achievement Award, UCSD
Selected publications
- List of publications by Susumu Tonegawa
- Tonegawa, S. (1983). Somatic generation of antibody diversity. Nature, 302(5909), 575-581.
- Gillies, S. D., Morrison, S. L., Oi, V. T., & Tonegawa, S. (1983). A tissue-specific transcription enhancer element is located in the major intron of a rearranged immunoglobulin heavy chain gene. Cell, 33(3), 717-728.
- Liu, X., Ramirez, S., Pang, P. T., Puryear, C. B., Govindarajan, A., Deisseroth, K., & Tonegawa, S. (2012). Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall. Nature, 484(7394), 381-385.
- Ramirez, S., Liu, X., Lin, P. A., Suh, J., Pignatelli, M., Redondo, R. L., Ryan, T.J., & Tonegawa, S. (2013). Creating a false memory in the hippocampus. Science, 341(6144), 387-391.
See also
In Spanish: Susumu Tonegawa para niños
- Long-term potentiation
- List of Japanese Nobel laureates
- List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Kyoto University
