Greg Petsko | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1948-08-07)August 7, 1948 (age 77) Washington, D.C., USA |
| Education | Princeton University (BS) Merton College, Oxford (MS,PhD) |
| Spouse | Laurie Glimcher[1] |
| Awards | Rhodes Scholarship Member of the U.S.National Academy of Sciences Member of the U.S.National Academy of Medicine Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Harvard Medical School Brigham and Women's Hospital Weill Cornell Medical College Cornell University Brandeis University Wayne State University School of Medicine MIT Max Planck Institute University of Oxford Princeton University |
| Thesis | Structural studies of triose phosphate isomerase. (1974) |
| Doctoral advisor | David Chilton Phillips |
| Website | Official website |
Gregory A. Petsko (born August 7, 1948) is an Americanbiochemist and member of theNational Academy of Sciences, theNational Academy of Medicine, theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and theAmerican Philosophical Society. He is currently Professor of Neurology at theAnn Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases atHarvard Medical School andBrigham and Women's Hospital. He formerly had an endowed professorship (the Arthur J. Mahon Chair) in Neurology and Neuroscience atWeill Cornell Medical College and is still an adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering atCornell University, and is also the Gyula and Katica Tauber Professor, Emeritus, in biochemistry and chemistry atBrandeis University. On October 24, 2023, in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, President Joe Biden presented Gregory Petsko and eight others with theNational Medal of Science, the highest honor the United States can bestow on a scientist and engineer.
As of 2020 Petsko's research interests are understanding thebiochemical bases of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS,discovering drugs (especially by usingstructure-based drug design) andbiologics, especiallygene therapy, that could therapeutically affect those biochemical targets, and seeing any resulting clinical candidatestested in humans. He has made key contributions to the fields ofprotein crystallography,biochemistry,biophysics,enzymology, andneuroscience.
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Petsko was an undergraduate atPrinceton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1970. He received aRhodes Scholarship, and obtained his doctorate in Molecular Biophysics fromMerton College, Oxford supervised byDavid Phillips, studying the structure and mechanism ofthe enzyme triosephosphate isomerase.[1]
He did a brief postdoctoral fellowship in Paris withPierre Douzou, studying enzymology at low temperatures. In 1996 he did a sabbatical at theUniversity of California at San Francisco withIra Herskowitz, where he learned yeast genetics and molecular biology with the support of aGuggenheim Foundation Fellowship.[2]
Petsko's independent academic career has included stints atWayne State University School of Medicine, theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, theMax Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, and, from 1991 until 2012,Brandeis University, where he was Professor of Biochemistry and of Chemistry and director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center. He is past-president of theAmerican Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and of theInternational Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He is an elected member of theNational Academy of Sciences, theNational Academy of Medicine, and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a foreign member of theHungarian Academy of Sciences and has an honorary Doctor of Laws fromDalhousie University. In April 2010, he was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[2] In 2012, he announced that he was moving toWeill Cornell Medical College in New York City, where his wife, the world-renowned immunologist Dr.Laurie Glimcher, had been appointed dean.[3] He was appointed atWeill Cornell Medical College as the director of the Helen and Robert Appel Alzheimer's Disease Research Institute and the Arthur J. Mahon Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, and atCornell University as adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering, and retained an appointment atBrandeis University as Gyula and Katica Tauber Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry, Emeritus.[4][5] His wife was named president and CEO of theDana–Farber Cancer Institute in October 2016, and in January 2019 he followed her back to Boston, assuming his present position as Professor of Neurology at theAnn Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases atBrigham and Women's Hospital andHarvard Medical School. On October 24, 2023, he and eight otherscientists received theNational Medal of Science from President Joe Biden. The National Medal of Science is the highest honor the United States can confer on a scientist; since the first was awarded in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, only 506 individuals have received it.[3][4][5][6]
Petsko's current research interests are understanding thebiochemical bases of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS,discovering drugs (especially by usingstructure-based drug design) that could therapeutically affect those biochemical targets, and seeing any resulting drug and gene therapy candidatestested in humans.[5][6]
Petsko's past research interests[7] have been inprotein crystallography andenzymology. He is co-author withDagmar Ringe ofProtein Structure and Function.[8] He was also the author of a monthly column inGenome Biology[9][10] modelled after an amusing column inCurrent Biology penned bySydney Brenner.[11] The first ten years of that column are available as an eBook.[12]
Petsko is best known for his collaborative work withDagmar Ringe, in which they usedX-ray crystallography to solve important problems in protein function includingprotein dynamics as a function of temperature and problems in mechanistic enzymology,[13][14][15] and for his collaborative work with Dr. Scott Small of Columbia University, which focuses on the retromer endosomal protein trafficking pathway and its role in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]
At MIT and Brandeis, he andDagmar Ringe trained a large number of current leaders in structuralmolecular biology who now have leadership roles in science. These individuals include:
