Columbia University will award the 2011 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young “for their work on the molecular basis of circadian rhythms, the first demonstration of a molecular mechanism for behavior”. Hall is a Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brandeis, and Rosbash is an HHMI Investigator and Professor of Biology at Brandeis. The prize is awarded annually for outstanding basic research in biology or biochemistry. In the early 1980s, working at Brandeis, Hall and Rosbash combined their expertise in fly genetics and molecular biology to clone the Drosophila gene period, a key regulator of the circadian rhythm, as Young and his lab at The Rockefeller University did independently.
In subsequent years, research in the Hall and Rosbash labs at Brandeis led to transcriptional feedback models for the clock, discovery of additional genetic factors involved in the behavior, and discovery of neuroanatomical features involved in circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms have been found in a very wide variety of organisms, and seem to be important in metabolism and disease.
Hall and Rosbash will receive their award in November at a ceremony at Columbia University.
