Science at Cal - Jeremy Thorner - The Mighty Single-Celled Yeast
Channel: Science@Cal
Date: 2013-10-21

Humans have taken advantage of the metabolism of the tiny fungus called baker's or brewer's yeast to generate beer and wine from grains and fruits and to bake bread and other confections for millennia. Less appreciated is the fact that this organism has provided a living test tube in which to discover many of the fundamental functions necessary for all life. These processes include many of considerable importance for understanding the underlying basis of human diseases, and for producing therapeutic agents used clinically in human medicine. How research in yeast, much of it conducted here at UC Berkeley, has contributed to our understanding and treatment of asthma, cancer, diabetes and malaria will be discussed.

Jeremy Thorner is a Professor in the Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley and, for twenty years, held the William V. Power Chair in Biology. Born, raised and educated in public schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, he received his A.B. magna cum laude in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Harvard University. He was then a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine. He joined the faculty at Berkeley in 1974. Honors received for his research and teaching accomplishments include a ten-year MERIT Award from National Institute of General Medical Sciences (1989-1998) and a Dean's Award for Distinguished Research Mentoring of Undergraduates in the College of Letters and Science (2004), election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1998), a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (1998), and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).