Dulbecco (Dulbecco), Renato

genus. February 22, 1914
Italian-American virologist Renato Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro, southern Italy. Shortly after his birth the First World War, and his father, Leonardo Renato Dulbecco, was drafted into the Italian army. The boy, his mother Maria (Virdiya) Dulbecco, brothers and sisters spent the war years in northern Italy, in Turin and Cuneo. After the war the family moved to the province of Liguria, where D. received primary education. In his youth he showed an interest in physics and assembled electronic seismograph, one of the first devices of this kind.
After graduating from high school at the age of 16 years, D. enrolled in the University of Turin to study medicine and biology. Soon he realized that biology attracts him more than medicine, and began working in the laboratory of Giuseppe Levi, a professor of anatomy and histology. Here D. mastered the methods of cell cultivation, he also became acquainted with Salvador Luria and Rita Levi-Montalcini, graduate students, physicians, whose influence on himself, he was later praised very highly.
After receiving the medical degree in 1936. D. was intended as a medical officer in the Italian army. Demobilizovashis two years later, he returned to Turin to continue work in the field of pathology, but in 1939. his studies were again interrupted by military service. In the early years of the Second World War he served some time in France and then fought in the Italian parts of Germany and the Soviet front, where he was wounded in 1942. and spent several months in hospital. After the fall of Mussolini's government - as well as during the subsequent Nazi occupation - he participated in the Italian Resistance movement, providing medical assistance to the guerrillas.
After the war, Dr.. became an assistant professor of experimental embryology in Turin. Luria, who moved to the United States and became a professor at Indiana University, spent the summer of 1946,. Turin. On its recommendation, D. left Italy in the next year and joined the research work in the bacteriological department at Indiana University in Bloomington. In this university in the 40-ies. Luria developed quantitative experimental methods for studying genetics of bacteria and bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). Using experimental approaches Luria, D. began the study of phages.
Work carried out in D. in Bloomington, soon attracted the attention of Max Delbruck, who in 1949. suggested D. place a senior researcher at Caltech in Pasadena. After moving from Indiana to Oregon and then to the Pacific coast, D. was 'fascinated by the beauty and vastness of' U.S. 'goodwill of the people'. At the Institute, he continued the study of bacteriophages to the mid 50's. When Delbrц?ck invited him to study animal viruses that were similar to bacteriophages, but the infected animal cells. In the experiments, D. used quantitative methods Luria and Delbruck for studying polio virus and Rous sarcoma virus (open Peyton Rous), this work contributed to an improved vaccine against polio.
In 1952, Mr.. D. became an associate professor of biology, and in 1954. - Full professor, and his interests gradually shifted to the study of tumor viruses and tumor cells. However, Howard M. Temin, graduate students, Dr.. studied the genetics of Rous sarcoma virus. The object of his research were also polio virus that causes multiple tumors in mice, and simian virus-40 - the cause of leukemia in these animals.
Following the development of the method of determining the number of tumor cells in cell cultures D. and his colleagues found that tumor cells transformed by tumor viruses so that they begin to divide indefinitely, a process they called the cell transformation. In the study of biological characteristics of tumor cells, they found that when normal cells divide and begin to invade the borders of neighboring tissue, the cellular regulatory system gives them the signal to stop fission. However, in the case of tumor cell system of regulation is broken. Temin suggested that cellular transformation caused by a viral genome, which became part of the cellular DNA. Under this so-called hypothesis of proviral, . genetic code of some tumor RNA viruses can be rewritten in the cellular DNA enzyme, . located in the protein coat of the virus, . that allows the virus penetrates genes to control genes of the host cell,
. This enzyme, called reverse transcriptase, was in fact open Temin and David Baltimore; RNA viruses that have reverse transcriptase and forming proviral genes, now called retroviruses. It is believed that they are responsible for diseases such as hepatitis, AIDS and some types of cancer.
In 1963, Mr.. D. was also appointed Senior Fellow Solkovskogo Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolly (California), where he headed a group of scientists who have studied the regulatory system of tumor cell growth. He remained in Solkovskom institute until 1972, before he became deputy director of the London association of state laboratories for Research on Cancer. There he focused on the clinical application of their previous results on tumor viruses.
. 'In studies on the interaction between tumor viruses and genetic material of cells', D., Baltimore and Howard Temin shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1975
. Their findings have provided scientists a scheme of interaction of tumor viruses with the genetic material of cells, a means of identification of malignant human tumors caused by tumor viruses. In his Nobel lecture D. noted that 'in recent years, the gap between science and society has become excessive, and the consequences are felt particularly strongly by biologists. While we are spending all their efforts in seeking answers to questions about the nature of cancer and ways to prevent or treat, the company strenuously produce carcinogenic substances and contaminates their environment '.
Since 1977, Mr.. D. - Well-known professor Solkovskogo Institute. In 1940. He married Josephine Salva; they have a son and daughter. After the divorce from his wife in 1963. D. in the same year he married Myyuir Maurino, who bore him a daughter.
Numerous awards D. include the Albert Lasker Award for basic medical research (1964), the award-Louise Gross Horwitz, Columbia University (1973) and award Zelman A. Waxman on Microbiology of the National Academy of Science (1974). He - a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the Italian National Academy of Sciences. D. - Holds honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Glasgow and the University of Vriyya in Belgium.