Laura Landweber

Laura Faye Landweber is an American evolutionary biologist. As of 2016, she is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of biological sciences at Columbia University. Previously, she was a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. She specializes in RNA-mediated epigenetic inheritance and molecular evolution.

Laura Landweber
Alma materPrinceton University A.B., Harvard University Ph.D.
Known forRNA mediated epigenetic control, unusual genome organisation, genome evolution, computational molecular biology, DNA computers
SpouseSteven Gubser[1]
Children3[1]
Awards2001 - Tulip Award for DNA Computing, 2005, Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2008. Regional Award Winner Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists from The New York Academy of Sciences, 2012 - Guggenheim Fellow
Scientific career
Fieldsevolution of genomes, DNA computers, structure and function of unusual genomes in Oxytrichia and other organisms
InstitutionsColumbia University, Princeton University
Thesis"RNA editing and the evolution of mitochondrial DNA in kinetoplastid protozoa." (1993)

Education

Landweber graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in molecular biology from Princeton University in 1989 after completing a 50-page-long senior thesis titled "A Method for Evolutionary Sequence Analysis of Genes and Pseudogenes Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction: Applications to the Mouse Tcp-1 Gene."[2]

She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991 and 1993, respectively. Her doctoral dissertation is titled "RNA editing and the evolution of mitochondrial DNA in kinetoplastid protozoa."[3]

Research career

In 1994, Landweber became a faculty member of Princeton University at the age of 26.

In a 2000 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on biocomputers, Landweber solved chess's knights problem, where one determines how many non-attacking knights can be placed on a chessboard, using a test tube of RNA,[4] a breakthrough in DNA computing.

Laura Landweber has also studied the evolution of the genetic code[5] and the scrambled genomes of ciliates such as Oxytricha.[6] Her laboratory has supported the notion that the code was no accident but arose from affinities between the nucleic acid codons and their cognate amino acids.[5] Her studies of the massive rearrangements of the genome in the micronucleus of Oxytricha showed an unsuspected role for non-coding RNA in directing the process epigenetically.[7]

Publications
  • DNA Based Computers II (1998), Landweber, L. and Baum, E., eds, American Mathematicsl Society
  • Genetics and the Extinction of Species: DNA and the Conservation of Biodiversity (1999), Landweber, L. F. and Dobson, A. P., eds, Princeton University Press
  • Evolution as Computation (2003), Landweber, L. F. and Winfree, E., eds, Springer Verlag[8][3]

Awards and honors

Personal life

Laura Landweber was married to physicist Steven Gubser[1] and has three daughters.[1][14]

References
  1. McClain, Dylan Loeb (September 6, 2019). "Steven Gubser, a Bright Star in the Physics Universe, Dies at 47". The New York Times. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
  2. Landweber, Laura Faye (1989). Princeton University. Department of Molecular Biology (ed.). "A Method for Evolutionary Sequence Analysis of Genes and Pseudogenes Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction: Applications to the Mouse Tcp-1 Gene". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. "Laura Landweber" (PDF). Princeton University. January 19, 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
  4. Hopkin, Karen (November 1, 2006). "The Fast Track to Success". The Scientist.
  5. Knight, Robin D; Landweber, Laura F (June 2000). "The Early Evolution of the Genetic Code". Cell. 101 (6): 569–572. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(00)80866-1. PMID 10892641.
  6. Landweber, LF (October 19, 2007). "Genetics. Why genomes in pieces?". Science. 318 (5849): 405–7. doi:10.1126/science.1150280. PMID 17947572. S2CID 86023076.
  7. Nowacki, M; Vijayan, V; Zhou, Y; Schotanus, K; Doak, TG; Landweber, LF (January 10, 2008). "RNA-mediated epigenetic programming of a genome-rearrangement pathway". Nature. 451 (7175): 153–8. Bibcode:2008Natur.451..153N. doi:10.1038/nature06452. PMC 2647009. PMID 18046331.
  8. "The Landweber Lab: Publications". Princeton University. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
  9. "Laura F. Landweber". Sigma Xi. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
  10. "List of Award Winners". International Conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
  11. "AAAS Fellows". AAAS. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
  12. "Laura Landweber". Blavatnik Awards. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
  13. "Laura Landweber". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
  14. Jeffries, Abigail (2008). "Ingenious, Innovative, and Interdisciplinary!". The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine. No. 2, Autumn 2008. pp. 11–18. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
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