David Baltimore


Baltimore, David

(bôl`tĭmôr), 1938–, American microbiologist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Rockefeller Univ., 1964. He conducted (1965–68) virology research at the Salk Institute before becoming a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. In 1970 he and his wife Alice Huang discovered reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that allows RNA to synthesize DNA in retrovirusesretrovirus,
type of RNA virus that, unlike other RNA viruses, reproduces by transcribing itself into DNA. An enzyme called reverse transcriptase allows a retrovirus's RNA to act as the template for this RNA-to-DNA transcription.
..... Click the link for more information. . He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renato DulbeccoDulbecco, Renato
, 1914–2012, Italian-American virologist, b. Catanzaro, Italy. In 1947 he came to the United States to work with Salvador Luria at Indiana Univ. in Bloomington, moving to the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1949. He became a U.S.
..... Click the link for more information.  and Howard TeminTemin, Howard Martin,
1934–94, American virologist, b. Philadelphia, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1959. A professor at the Univ. of Wisconsin in Madison, Temin began his cancer research while still a student, working with his professor Renato Dulbecco and
..... Click the link for more information.  for his experimental confirmation of the connection between certain RNA viruses and cancer.

Appointed president of Rockefeller Univ. in 1990, he resigned the next year after a scientific fraud scandal. A paper he coauthored was said to contain fraudulent data from another author, Dr. Thereza Imanishi-Kari, and Baltimore was criticized for his vehement defense of the paper despite the evidence. In 1996, an appeals panel overturned the verdict of the original investigating office, the federal Office of Scientific Integrity (now the Office of Reasearch Integrity), and Baltimore and Imanishi-Kari were exonerated. In 1997 Baltimore was appointed president of the California Institute of Technology.

Bibliography

See D. J. Kevles, The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character (1998).

Baltimore, David

 

Born Mar. 7, 1938, in New York. American virologist. Member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Baltimore studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Rockefeller Institute. He worked in the molecular biology department of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the years 1964–65 and at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in San Diego from 1965 to 1968. Since 1968 he has taught at MIT, where he became a professor of biology in 1972.

In 1970, simultaneously with H. Temin and independently of him, Baltimore extracted the enzyme known as RNA-dependent DNA-polymerase (revertase) from an oncogenic RNA-containing virus. He showed that the genetic information of the oncogenic RNA-containing virus undergoes reverse transcription with the aid of the enzyme. The resulting DNA-product is then included in the genome of the cell; as a result of this process, a normal cell becomes a cancer cell.

Baltimore shared the Nobel Prize in 1975 with R. Dulbecco and H. Temin.

Baltimore, David

(1938– ) virologist, geneticist; born in New York City. He was a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1963–64) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1964–65), then moved to the Salk Institute of Biological Studies (1965–68), where he began investigations of RNA viruses. He returned to MIT (1968–90), where he discovered a tumor virus enzyme he termed "reverse transcriptase" which can transform the host cell's DNA into cancer-causing viral RNA (1970); for this he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology. In 1972 he synthesized part of the gene for hemoglobin; he then worked on developing synthetic vaccines. An outspoken advocate of self-policing of genetic engineering by scientists, he became president of Rockefeller University in 1990, but resigned in 1991 after an extensive controversy resulted from his attempt to impede an investigation of a paper he had sponsored (1986) by a former MIT postdoctoral researcher who had falsified her data.