Jack W. Szostak

Szostak grew up in Montreal and Ottawa. Although Szostak does not speak Polish, he stated in an interview with Wprost weekly that he remembers his Polish roots.[3] He attended Riverdale High School (Quebec) and graduated at the age of 15 with the scholars prize.[4] He graduated with a B.Sc in cell biology from McGill University at the age of 19. In 1970, as an undergraduate, he participated in The Jackson Laboratory's Summer Student Program under the mentorship of Dr. Chen K. Chai. He completed his PhD in biochemistry at Cornell University (advisor Prof. Ray Wu[5]) before moving to Harvard Medical School to start his own lab at the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute. He credits Ruth Sager for giving him his job there when he had little yet to show. In 1984 Howard Goodman recruited him to Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Molecular Biology. He was granted tenure and a full professorship at Harvard Medical School in 1988.

Szostak has made contributions to the field of genetics. He is credited with the construction of the world's first yeast artificial chromosome. That achievement helped scientists to map the location of genes in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His achievements in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project.

His discoveries have helped to clarify the events that lead to chromosomal recombination—the reshuffling of genes that occurs during meiosis—and the function of telomeres, the specialized DNA sequences at the tips of chromosomes.

In the early 90s his laboratory shifted its research direction and focused on studying RNA enzymes, which had been recently discovered by Cech and Altman. He developed the technique of in vitro evolution of RNA (also developed independently by Gerald Joyce) which enables the discovery of RNAs with desired functions through successive cycles of selection, amplification and mutation. He isolated the first aptamer (term he used for the first time). He isolated RNA enzymes with RNA ligase activity directly from random sequence (project of David Bartel).

Currently, his lab focuses on the challenges of understanding the origin of life on Earth, and the construction of artificial cellular life in the laboratory.[6] They have conducted detailed studies of mechanisms by which RNA templates may have replicated on early earth before the emergence of enzyme catalysts. In particular, they have focused on imidazole-activated ribonucleotides (phosphorimidazolides) as monomers capable of elongating a new RNA strand.[7] Significantly, the Szostak group discovered that phosphorimidazolide-mediated template elongation occurs via 5'-5'-imidazolium bridged dinucleotide intermediates[8] which accelerate polymerization. Phosphorimidazolides were first proposed to be critical for early-earth nucleotide polymerization by Leslie E. Orgel and colleagues.

Beyond his research, he has delivered talks about the origin of life on Earth, as he did at the first Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands, in 2011. He subsequently joined the Starmus Board of Directors, and his 2011 lecture was published in the book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space.[9]

Szostak is married to Terri-Lynn McCormick and has two sons.[12] He has two sisters, Carolyn Szostak and Kathy Hysen.[13]

• "About Jack W. Szostak". The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Retrieved 2007-11-02.
• "Jack W. Szostak at Harvard University". Harvard University. Retrieved 2007-11-02.
• "Curriculum Vitae of Jack W. Szostak" (PDF). Massachusetts General Hospital. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 28, 2008. Retrieved 2007-11-02.
• Nobel Prize information
• Szostak Lab website
• DNA Ends: Just the Beginning Nobel Prize Lecture
• Jack Szostak's Lecture: "The Origin of Life on Earth"
• Last interview of Dr. Jack Szostak