Alan M. Lambowitz

Alan Lambowitz is a professor for the University of Texas at Austin in Molecular Biosciences and Oncology and has been instrumental in many bio-molecular processes and concepts, such as intron splicing and mitochondrial ribosomal assembly.

Education Alan Lambowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 24, 1947. He attended Stuyvesant High School, which specializes in science. He attended Brooklyn College for his undergraduate degree in Chemistry. After completing this degree in 1968, Lambowitz began graduate school at Yale. He received a Ph.D. from Yale and then moved his work to the Johnson Research Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania. After a stint at Rockefeller University, Lambowitz pursued a fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health, followed by an acceptance of a faculty position at St Louis University School of Medicine under the department of biochemistry. Upon returning to St. Louis, Lambowitz promptly began studying splicing mechanisms of ribosomal RNA processing systems. Although he's not responsible for the discovery of splicing, the research that follows this within the bacterial community can largely be attributed to him, especially when regarding groups 2 introns. Lambowitz made the move to Austin, Texas in 1997 becoming the director of The Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology there. Here he has cultivated a group of professionals that work on molecular biological research and received multiple merit awards in the process.

Research and scientific endeavors Lambowitz has spent a majority of his career focusing on a very common fungus known as Neurospora Crassa, or common bread mold. Through utilizing this fungus as a research specimen, Lambowitz has helped pioneer many new theories as well as discount some older, incorrect theories.

Group ll Intron Research Much of the function of introns is still unknown to the scientific community today. This is precisely why Lambowitz focuses a majority of his research surrounding group II introns. Group II introns are a specific type of intron that is able to self-spice out of RNA segments and also are able to facilitate splicing and insertion into DNA in order to be replicated and passed on through ancestral pathways. These particular introns are especially important in understanding a variety of concepts within the microbiological community.

Lambowitz focuses on a variety of these concepts while in the lab, such as Group ll Intron reverse transcriptase mechanisms or RNA sequencing. One of the first concepts surrounding group II introns that Lambowitz began studying was their size and proliferation within cells. Group II introns specifically are often found in bacterial genomes, as well as in chloroplasts and mitochondrial genomes of eukaryotes. It was hypothesized that group II introns originated from proteobacteria that were incorporated into host genomes through the process of endosymbiosis. Once in the host genome, these introns went through a degeneration sequence, but promptly proliferated in large amounts after this degeneration. This allowed for the creation of an intron rich environment. Lambowitz and colleagues were able to determine that group II introns specifically were a longer form of intron, especially in ancestral form. This is specific to group II introns and is thought to be a result of their self-splicing mechanisms. Lambowitz furthered his research into group II introns, specifically exploring how these introns could help tell the story of ancestral bacterial lines using RNA sequencing. Along with colleagues, Lambowitz discovered that group II introns use a specific intron encoded protein in order to self-splice out of RNA. After understanding that these proteins serve to splice introns out of RNA, Lambowitz also discovered that the protein is capable of reverse transcriptase type functions in order to insert introns into host DNA. This discovery was crucial in understanding how these introns carried through ancestral lineage. Also, an important connection to know was the relationship between intron encoded proteins and the size of group II introns seen in host cells. When these introns are capable of encoding for their own intron encoded proteins the introns tend to be much longer.

Viral and Disease Utilization of Group ll Intron Splicing After laying the foundation for Group II Introns and the functions they provide, Lambowitz has branched off into using these mechanisms in order to discover ancestral lineage of bacteria, as well as to pursue research surrounding RNA Diagnostic approaches to disease identification.