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Boris Ephrussi (May
9,
1901–May
2,
1979) was a
French
geneticist of
Russian origin. He was one of
the many famous
Jewish
life scientists. He had
published two papers in November
1966 which represented a key
step in a decade of research in
his laboratory. This research
helped transform
mammalian, and especially
human, genetics.
Boris started his
scientific training as a
Russian
emigre in 1920. He studied the
initiation and regulation of
embryological processes by
intracellular and
extracellular factors. A major
strand of his early research
concerned the effect of
temperature on the development of
fertilized
sea urchin
eggs. In this work he used a
micromanipulator, which was
developed by
Robert Chambers, an
American biologist.
During Ephrussi's time, writing
a second
dissertation was standard
practice in France. Ephrussi's
involved
culturing tissues[1].
Ephrussi ran into difficulties
typically associated with early
tissue culture techniques, but
despite these obstacles Ephrussi
managed to conclude from studies
of
brachyury in
mice that intrinsic factors (i.e
genes) play a key role in
development.
As the next phase of his
career, Ephrussi coupled his
embryological concerns with a firm
conviction that one must
understand the role of genes in
order to decipher embryological
processes. He moved to
Caltech in
1934 and stayed until
1935 to learn genetics within
the intellectual empire of
T.H. Morgan. This move was
supported by the
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship.
During this period he conducted
important work with
George Beadle, who joined him
in
Paris in the
autumn of
1935. There they produced
results from experiments with
Drosophila eye
transplants which became
integral to the work of Beadle and
Tatum, who were working with
Neurospora, and from this
research developed the 'one
gene, one enzyme' hypothesis.
During
World War II, Ephrussi spent
most of his time as a
refugee at Johns Hopkins
University. Following this he
began work in France on
yeast and
cytoplasmic genetics. He began
working at the
Institut de Biologie
Physicochimique (the
Rothschild Institute) in Paris,
and later worked at the
CNRS at
Gif-sur-Yvette, where he
studied the contribution of
cytoplasm to the cell
phenotype and pursued the
interactions between
nuclear and cytoplasmic
genetic endowments necessary to
the yielding of an intact,
functioning (albeit
single-celled)
organism.
Ephrussi continued to work on
the topics he was primarily
interested until the late
1970s. Topics covered included
- using
hybrids with
teratomas to explore
determination and
differentiation (e.g. Finch
and Ephrussi
1967; Kahan and
Ephrussi
1970).
- negative regulation of
differentiated function (e.g.
Davidson, Ephrussi and Yamamoto
1966; Fougbre, Ruiz
and Ephrussi
1972).
- cellular and genetic
biological approaches over a
direct attack at the
molecular level (Ephrussi
1970, page 12).
In 1975 Ephrussi won a
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize.
Ephrussi lived to see that
transplantation was transforming
into a genetic tool that would
take on a new and more powerful
aspect in the molecular era.
However he died before seeing the
genetic advances made by DNA
recombination studies which had
been set in motion by the studies
he had undertaken. It can be said
that Ephrussi was a pioneer of
embryology and a main contributor
to the reconcilliation of modern
genetics and
Embryology.
