Carol W. Greider educated at University of California, Berkeley
Early life and education
Greider was born in San Diego, California. Her father, Kenneth Greider, was a physics professor. Her family moved from San Diego to Davis, California, where she spent many of her early years and graduated from Davis Senior High School in 1979.  She graduated from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in biology in 1983. During this time she also studied at the University of Göttingen and made significant discoveries there.Greider is dyslexic and states that her "compensatory skills also played a role in my success as a scientist because one has to intuit many different things that are going on at the same time and apply those to a particular problem" Greider initially suspected her dyslexia after seeing patterns of common mistakes such as backward words when she received back graded work in the first grade. Greider started to memorize words and their spellings rather than attempting to sound out the spelling of words. Greider has worked significantly to overcome her dyslexia to become successful in her professional life and credits her dyslexia as helping her appreciate differences and making unusual decisions such as the one to work with Tetrahymena, an unusual organism.Greider initially had difficulty getting into graduate school because of her low GRE scores, a result of her dyslexia. Greider applied to thirteen grad schools and was accepted to only two, California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. She chose Berkeley, where she would be able to work with Elizabeth Blackburn and where the two would make their telomerase discovery.Discovery of telomerase
Greider completed her Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1987 at Berkeley under Elizabeth Blackburn. While at Berkeley, Greider and Blackburn discovered how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
Greider joined Blackburn's laboratory in April 1984 looking for the enzyme that was hypothesized to add extra DNA bases to the ends of chromosomes. Without the extra bases, which are added as repeats of a six-base pair motif, chromosomes are shortened during DNA replication, eventually resulting in chromosome deterioration and senescence or cancer-causing chromosome fusion. Blackburn and Greider looked for the enzyme in the model organism Tetrahymena thermophila, a fresh-water protozoan with a large number of telomeres.On December 25, 1984, Greider first obtained results indicating that a particular enzyme was likely responsible. After six months of additional research, Greider and Blackburn concluded that it was the enzyme responsible for telomere addition. They published their findings in the journal Cell in December 1985. The enzyme, originally called "telomere terminal transferase," is now known as telomerase. Telomerase rebuilds the tips of chromosomes and determines the life span of cells.Greider's additional research to confirm her discovery was largely focused on identifying the mechanism that telomerase uses for elongation. Greider chose to use RNA degrading enzymes and saw that the telomeres stopped extending, which was an indication that RNA was involved in the enzyme.
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