Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 21, 2000

Volume 28, Number 29

Scientist Jennifer Doudna wins
prestigious Waterman Award

Yale scientist Jennifer Doudna, whose leading work in structural biology provided an answer to how RNA can act like an enzyme, has been awarded the prestigious Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation.

The award is made each year to an outstanding scientist or engineer aged 35 or younger and includes a grant of $500,000 over three years for scientific research or advanced study in any field of science. Established in 1976, the Waterman Award was instituted by Congress.

Doudna, of the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, is the 25th recipient of the award and only the third woman to be so honored.

"I was floored," Doudna said in describing her reaction when notified of the award. "I was very surprised and absolutely delighted. One of my first thoughts was that it really honors not only the work I have tried to do, but the really important contributions of students and post-graduate students that I have had the pleasure of working with at Yale."

Doudna's work explains how RNA can act like an enzyme to catalyze specific biochemical reactions and how polyanionic RNA forms a three-dimensional structure. Her most recent work has to do with the structure of the signal recognition particle, showing how this recognition takes place on a molecular level.

The colleague who nominated Doudna for the award, Joan Steitz, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, said, "There can be no question that her pioneering accomplishments have changed the way the scientific community thinks about RNA molecules. Such exceptional achievements are precisely what the Waterman Award was created to recognize."

"Jennifer has a particular constellation of qualities as a scientist," Steitz continued. "She knows a lot of biochemistry, so she could design the right fragments of these large RNAs so that they would, in fact, crystallize. She also made very wise decisions in coming to Yale, where there was a supportive and very active group of structural biologists. And she has all sorts of guts and determination, and that's the reason why she tackled what was a very, very hard problem; she knew it was an important problem."

Doudna earned a B.A. in chemistry from Pomona College in 1985 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard University in 1989. Her previous honors include the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellow Award, the Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award in Biomedical Science, the Johnson Foundation Prize for Innovative Research and the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research. Doudna also was a Searle Scholar and a Young Investigator of the Donaghue Medical Research Foundation. In addition, she is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Doudna's laboratory is continuing to build on the RNA research, focusing on two questions: how RNA played a role in evolution, and what can be learned about how life evolved by looking at RNA protein machines that exist in modern biology.

By Jacqueline Weaver

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