Michael Rosbash

His parents, Hilde and Alfred Rosbash, were Jewish refugees who left Nazi Germany in 1938.

His father was a cantor, which, in Judaism, is a person who chants worship services.

Rosbash's family moved to Boston when he was two years old, and he has been an avid Red Sox fan ever since.

Initially, Rosbash was interested in mathematics but an undergraduate biology course at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a summer of working in Norman Davidson's lab steered him towards biological research.

Michael Morris Rosbash (born March 7, 1944) is an American geneticist and chronobiologist.

Rosbash is a professor and researcher at Brandeis University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Rosbash graduated from Caltech in 1965 with a degree in chemistry, spent a year at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris on the Fulbright Scholarship, and obtained a doctoral degree in biophysics in 1970 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Sheldon Penman.

After spending three years on a postdoctoral fellowship in genetics at the University of Edinburgh, Rosbash joined the Brandeis University faculty in 1974.

Rosbash is married to fellow scientist Nadja Abovich and he has a stepdaughter named Paula and daughter named Tanya.

Rosbash's research initially focused on the metabolism and processing of mRNA; mRNA is the molecular link between DNA and protein.

After arriving at Brandeis, Rosbash collaborated with co-worker Jeffrey Hall and investigated the genetic influences on circadian rhythms of the internal biological clock.

They used Drosophila melanogaster to study patterns of activity and rest.

Rosbash's research group cloned the Drosophila period gene in 1984 and proposed the Transcription Translation Negative Feedback Loop for circadian clocks in 1990.

In 1984, Rosbash and Hall cloned the first Drosophila clock gene, period.

Following work done by post-doctoral fellow, Paul Hardin, in discovering that period mRNA and its associated protein (PER) had fluctuating levels during the circadian cycle, in 1990 they proposed a Transcription Translation Negative Feedback Loop (TTFL) model as the basis of the circadian clock.

Following this proposal, they looked into the elements that make up other parts of the clock.

In 1990, Rosbash, Hall, and Hardin discovered the role of the period gene (per) in the Drosophila' circadian oscillator.

They found that PER protein levels fluctuate in light dark cycles, and these fluctuations persist in constant darkness.

Similarly, per mRNA abundance also has rhythmic expression that entrains to light dark cycles.

In the fly head, per mRNA levels oscillate in both 12-hour light, 12-hour dark cycles as well as in constant darkness.

Per mRNA levels peaked at the beginning of the subjective night followed by a peak in PER protein levels about 6 hours later.

Mutated per genes affected the cycling of per mRNA.

From this experimental data, Rosbash, Hall, and Hardin hypothesized that PER protein is involved in a negative feedback loop that controls per mRNA levels, and that this transcription-translation feedback loop is a central feature of the Drosophila circadian clock.

They also looked at two other single missense period mutations, perS and perL1.

These mutations cause the peak of the evening activity to occur earlier and later, respectively, compared to wildtype per+ flies.

They found that RNA levels for perS and perL1 also display clear rhythmicity.

Like locomotor activity the peak expression is shifted earlier for perS and later for perL1.

They transformed the period0 null mutation flies with a 7.2-kb piece of functional per DNA, and measured per mRNA levels at the per0 locus and new locus.

Following transformation, per mRNA levels were rhythmic at both the original and new locus.

The per0 locus was able to transcribe normal per mRNA and translate normal PER protein, meaning that rhythmicity was rescued by functional PER protein transcribed and translated from the 7.2-kb piece of per DNA.

In 1998, they discovered the cycle gene, clock gene, and cryptochrome photoreceptor in Drosophila through the use of forward genetics, by first identifying the phenotype of a mutant and then determining the genetics behind the mutation.

In May 1998, Rosbash et al. found a homolog for mammalian Clock that performed the same function of activating the transcription of per and tim that they proceeded to call dClock.

Also in May 1998, Rosbash et al. discovered in Drosophila the clock gene cycle, a homolog of the mammalian bmal1 gene.

In November 1998, Rosbash et al. discovered the cryb Drosophila mutant, which led to the conclusion that cryptochrome protein is involved in circadian photoreception.

Rosbash began studying mRNA processing as a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His work in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae has revealed the enzymes, proteins, and subcellular organelles and their convergence upon mRNA in a specific order in order to translate mRNA into proteins.

Missteps in this process have been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, so this work is essential for better understanding and treatment of diseases.

Rosbash was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.

Along with Michael W. Young and Jeffrey C. Hall, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".

Michael Rosbash was born in Kansas City, Missouri.