Michael Levine

Michael Levine is an American developmental and cell biologist at Princeton University, where he is the director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and a Professor of Molecular Biology.

Levine previously held appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, San Diego, and Columbia University. He is notable for co-discovering the homeobox in 1983 and for discovering the organization of the regulatory regions of developmental genes.

Biography Levine was born in West Hollywood and raised in Los Angeles He went on to graduate studies at Yale, where he studied with Alan Garen and in 1981 received a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry.

Discoveries Homeobox Levine was a post-doc with Walter Gehring in Switzerland from 1982 to 1983. There, he co-discovered the homeobox with Ernst Hafen and fellow post-doc William McGinnis: After learning that Ultrabithorax, a gene that specifies the development of wings, showed a localized pattern of expression similar to that of Antennapedia, they decided to revisit the classic papers of Ed Lewis. In 1978, Lewis had proposed that all these homeotic genes (the ones that tell animals where to put a wing and where to put a leg and so on) arose from a common ancestral gene. So McGinnis carved up the Antennapedia gene and, using those pieces as probes, the trio identified eight genes, which turned out to be the eight homeotic genes in flies. "That pissed off a lot of people," says Levine. "The homeotic genes were the trophies of the Drosophila genome. And we got 'em all. I mean, we got 'em all!" Far from being humble, Levine says, "We were like, 'We kicked your ass pretty good, didn't we, baby!' Those were the days." He then joined the faculty of Columbia University, where he "led the discovery of the modular organization of the regulatory regions of developmental genes." and the composition of the notochord, the defining tissue of the chordate phylum.

Awards 1982 – Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship 1985 – Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship 1996 – NAS Award in Molecular Biology - "For his insightful contributions to our understanding of gene regulation networks and molecular mechanisms governing the development of organisms with a segmented body plan." 1998 - Elected to United States National Academy of Sciences in "Cellular and Developmental Biology" section: "Utilizing an elegant blend of in vitro and in vivo studies, Levine carried out insightful and complete analysis of regulatory events that govern segmentation and dorsal-ventral polarity in Drosophila. His work provided a dramatic example of combinatorial regulation at a complex enhancer and established new paradigms for transcriptional control." 2009 – Wilbur Cross Medal (Yale Alumni Association)

Professional relations Levine cites as a significant influence his instructor Fred Wilt (taking his developmental biology class "was probably the single most galvanizing experience I had in terms of defining my future goals"),

Notable papers (the homeobox paper)