2013 Curt Stern Award Introduction: John Moran1

It is a great honor and a distinct pleasure to introduce the 2013 recipient of the Curt Stern Award, my good friend John Moran. This award honors the memory of Curt Stern as a pioneering human geneticist and is presented annually for outstanding scientific achievements in human genetics over the past 10 years.View Large Image | View Hi-Res Image | Download PowerPoint SlideStern was a leading Drosophila geneticist trained by Thomas Hunt Morgan, who was first to demonstrate crossing-over in homologous chromosomes in the fruit fly. He taught first at the University of Rochester and then at the University of California, Berkeley. After World War II, he turned to human genetics and in 1949 published a renowned textbook of human genetics. I first attended The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual meeting in 1971, and I remember when Curt Stern received the William Allan Award in 1974. It was a grand occasion honoring a pioneer in our field.Today we honor another outstanding scientist, John Moran, principally for his work in determining the importance of mobile DNA, or “jumping genes,” in the human genome. I have been very fortunate in the quality of graduate students and postdocs who have come to my lab. John Moran was right at the top of the list. Before I had even heard of John, Jef Boeke, an esteemed Johns Hopkins colleague, told me that he had met Moran and that Moran was going to apply to join my lab. I remember Jef’s comment that John was “really a terrific person and scientist.”Boy, was I fortunate that after Moran had done his graduate work on mobile DNA in yeast, he decided to work on human transposition as a postdoc and to join my lab. We had isolated two potentially active human L1 elements that had retrotransposed into F8 and DMD. John decided that he would set up a cell-culture assay for retrotransposition. Because he had meticulously assembled suitable reagents, plasmids, and cell lines and had a great scheme for detecting real retrotransposition events, his assay actually worked marvelously on the first try. Frankly, I couldn’t believe that all those HeLa cell colonies he obtained in that first experiment contained a retrotransposition event. Yet indeed they did! His experiments always seemed to work. He used his assay to show that both L1-encoded proteins were critical for retrotransposition and that during evolution, L1s could shuffle exons throughout the genome. John left my lab in 1998 for the University of Michigan after getting job offers from over ten different universities, and he continues to use his in vitro retrotransposition assay in much of his work at Michigan.That work has been amazing! He has discovered that virtually all of the findings made in cell culture recapitulate what happens in human beings. He has also found that in the battle for survival between retrotransposons and their hosts, retrotransposons, or “jumping genes,” can affect genome evolution in many ways.Along the way, John has published over 60 papers, including ten in the very top journals, Cell, Science, and Nature, and won many honors. In 1998, he won the ASHG Postdoctoral Research Award. He has been a Damon Runyan fellow and a Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar. In the past 15 years at the University of Michigan, he has been awarded numerous institutional honors, including the Dean’s Award for Basic Science Research and an endowed university-wide chair, the Gil Omenn Collegiate Professorship of Human Genetics. For the past 5 years, he has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and in 2012 he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. John has been involved in many activities in support of the academic community, including fulfilling considerable teaching responsibilities at Michigan, serving as the associate director and soon-to-be director of the Predoctoral Genetics Training Grant at Michigan, and being very active in the affairs of ASHG. Because of his gregarious and exuberant style and clear presentations, Moran has been in high demand as a speaker at seminars and national and international symposia, leading him to average eight to ten talks per year.John has a number of personal characteristics that are important to his success as a scientist. First, he loves to talk about science, both yours and his. Second, in the lab he always carries out every possible control that anyone could think of to make sure that his claims are correct. He also holds his many trainees to this very high standard. Third, he is loaded with ideas, most of which are really good. I’ve never met any scientist with as many good experimental ideas that could be readily tested. On the other hand, John does have a few faults. First, he is a diehard fan of the New York Yankees. John was insufferable in continually asserting that Lou Gehrig was a better player than Cal Ripken. Second, Moran loves to talk. When you speak with John by phone, you need to block off at least 30 min for the conversation. If you haven’t got 30 min, you need to cut him off in mid-sentence. Seriously, I’ve always enjoyed conversations with Moran because his language is so colorful and his topics, science and sports, are so interesting. Another important characteristic of John is his devotion to his family. Moran has a wonderful wife, Robin, and three great children. In the summer of 2012, Jessica, age 10 at the time, accompanied John on a business trip to Japan. On that trip, Moran’s colleagues got to see what a wonderful relationship he had with his daughter!To conclude, it is truly fitting that John Moran receive the 2013 Curt Stern Award for his impeccable science and the impact he has had on human genetics and evolutionary biology through his work on human mobile DNA. Please join me in congratulating him for his stellar achievements!