A Conversation with Richard Morimoto
- Scientific Editor, Cell
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Richard Morimoto is the Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biology in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Director of the Rice Institute for Biomedical Research at Northwestern University.
Jiaying Tan:You're a pioneer in the discovery of heat shock proteins and set the stage for understanding the stress response. What got you interested in this?
Dr. Morimoto:When I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago I heard Matt Meselson, who was one of the discoverers of the heat shock response. At that point, they had observed a set of newly synthesized proteins on a gel that corresponded to the chromosome puffs when you heat shock Drosophila. This was just before any genes had been cloned and I wondered, “What does a molecular thermometer look like? Why should a fruit fly have a thermometer and what is it used for?” I'm continuing to ask these questions, …
