Rosalind Lee
Rosalind Lee | |
---|---|
Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Known for | Discovery of microRNA |
Awards | Newcomb Cleveland Prize (2003) |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Harvard University Dartmouth College UMass Chan Medical School |
Rosalind 'Candy' Lee is a biomedical scientist, best known for her breakthrough paper on the discovery of microRNA which was published in 1993.[1] In 2002, Lee was joint receipient of the Newcomb Cleveland Prize, for the best paper published in the journal Science that year.[2] In 2024, Lee's 1993 paper was cited as the seminal discovery for which the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded that year, to co-author Victor Ambros, her husband.[3]
Career
[edit]Lee graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976.[4] That same year, she married Victor Ambros, who was at that time a PhD student at MIT.[5]
Lee began working as a research assistant in Victor Ambros' lab in 1987. Her work on the cloning of lin-4 began in January, 1989, in Ambros's lab at Harvard University, and she was joined on the project in the fall of 1989 by Rhonda Feinbaum, a postdoc.[6][7] Lee and Feinbaum worked for a couple of years in a labor intensive search for a gene behind a mutation.[8] What they eventually discovered was microRNA,[9] adding a new mechanism for gene regulation.[10][11] The 1993 paper was soon accepted for publication, and in a change of journal policy, it was published with a notice on the front page that it was jointly first-authored by Lee and Feinbaum,[6] clarifying that both contributed equally to the research.[12] In a 2004 paper, Lee, Feinbaum and Ambros describe how they eventually wrote up the work in 1993, and submitted it to the journal Cell, in parallel with a related paper by Gary Ruvkun.[6]
Lee's co-authored 1993 paper is widely regarded as the seminal contribution in the discovery of microRNA, for which her husband Ambros and Ruvkun were both awarded the Nobel Prize in 2024.[3] The Nobel announcement provoked interest into the question of why Lee hadn't also been recognized with the award.[12]
As of 2024, Lee is a Senior Scientist, in Program in Molecular Medicine, Dr. Victor Ambros's Molecular Medicine Laboratory, at UMass Chan Medical School.[13]
Awards
[edit]- 2002 Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Co-recipient for her first-author paper in Science that reported the discovery of 15 new microRNA genes in C. elegans.[14]
References
[edit]- ^ Lee, Rosalind C.; Feinbaum, Rhonda L.; Ambros, Victor (December 1993). "The C. elegans heterochronic gene lin-4 encodes small RNAs with antisense complementarity to lin-14". Cell. 75 (5): 843–854. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(93)90529-Y. PMID 8252621.
- ^ "Dartmouth Medicine Magazine - Publications". dartmed.dartmouth.edu.
- ^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024". NobelPrize.org.
- ^ "Donors Help to Build STEM Opportunities for Young People". MIT for a Better World.
- ^ "Dr. Paul Janssen Award". Dr. Paul Janssen Award.
- ^ a b c Lee, Rosalind; Feinbaum, Rhonda; Ambros, Victor (January 2004). "A short history of a short RNA". Cell. 116 (2 Suppl): S89–S92. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(04)00035-2. PMID 15055592.
- ^ Sedwick, Caitlin (May 13, 2013). "Victor Ambros: The broad scope of microRNAs". Journal of Cell Biology. 201 (4): 492–493. doi:10.1083/jcb.2014pi. PMC 3653358. PMID 23671307.
- ^ Gitschier, Jane (March 5, 2010). "In the Tradition of Science: An Interview with Victor Ambrose". PLOS Genetics. 6 (3): e1000853. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000853. PMC 2832673. PMID 20221254.
- ^ "Podcast: Victor Ambros on team effort behind Nobel Prize winning discovery of microRNA". UMass Chan Medical School. October 18, 2024. Retrieved October 20, 2024.
- ^ Ambros, Victor (October 17, 2024). "MicroRNA − a new Nobel laureate describes the scientific process of discovering these tiny molecules that turn genes on and off". Lusk Herald. Retrieved October 18, 2024.
- ^ "Victor Ambros '75, PhD '79 and Gary Ruvkun share Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine". MIT News. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. October 7, 2024. Retrieved October 18, 2024.
- ^ a b Domínguez, Nuño (October 8, 2024). "Why researcher Rosalind Lee, the wife of the Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, didn't receive the award as well?". EL PAÍS English.
- ^ "Senior Scientist". Dr. Ambros ' s Laboratory Homepage. November 19, 2024.
- ^ Lee, Rosalind C.; Ambros, Victor (October 26, 2001). "An Extensive Class of Small RNAs in Caenorhabditis elegans". Science. 294 (5543): 862–864. doi:10.1126/science.1065329. PMID 11679672 – via CrossRef.