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	Jerry L. Workman Appointed Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry
Jerry Workman

Jerry L. Workman, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and associate investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been named the Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry at Penn State.

Workman, who joined the Penn State faculty in 1992, conducts research about the central process in gene regulationóhow teams of molecules function as chromosome-remodeling machines that unlock the cell's genetic codes.  "Gene activation is a factor in diseases involving cancers, hormones, and viruses, and we are starting to get a much more detailed understanding of how this important process works," Workman says.

Protein molecules activate genes, sections of DNA that contain the cell's genetic instructions, by copying their code.  The cell then uses that copied code as a template for making whatever protein the gene is designed to produce.  "Each cell turns on only the particular genes it needs for whatever function it needs to perform," Workman says.

Studies in Workman's lab analyze protein complexes from yeast and human cells that modify the chromosome's rope-like molecules of DNA tangled up with proteins, which are the gene-containing structures in a cell's nucleus.  "We expect our work to render new insights into the development of cancers and other human diseases that result from aberrant gene expression," Workman says.

His ongoing research has revealed protein molecules previously unknown to be involved in gene expression plus other dynamics among the protein molecules, which work together as a team to activate genes.

"He is one of the most active, highly visible life scientists at Penn State," said Robert Schlegel, professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.  "There can be no doubt he is a scientist of the highest caliber who is most deserving of the honor of becoming the Paul Berg Professor."

The appointment as Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry provides Workman with an endowment of about $20,000 per year.  The professorship was created in 1995 by an anonymous donor in honor of Paul Berg, a 1948 Penn State graduate who was named a Distinguished Alumnus in 1974 and earned the Nobel Prize in 1980 for developing a method to map the structure and function of DNA.

Among his many awards, Workman was named Penn State's first associate investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1997.  He remains the only University faculty member to be so honored.  As an associate investigator for the institute, he maintains his faculty appointment at Penn State while his laboratory serves as part of the institute.

He was chosen as a Stohlman Scholar by the Leukemia Society of America in 1998, but declined the award in order to return extra research funds to the Leukemia Society.  He received a Leukemia Society of America Scholars Award in 1993, and held a Leukemia Society of American Special Fellowship from 1989 to 1992.  He currently serves on the Leukemia Society Grants Review Panel.  He has served the National Institutes of Health Reviewers Reserve in several capacities from 1993 to present.  He was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Membership in the Japanese Biochemical Society in 1997.  He also is a member of the American Society for Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He is an editor for the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Workman earned a bachelor of science degree, magna cum laude, in biological sciences at Northern Illinois University in 1979 and a doctoral degree in cell and molecular biology at the University of Michigan in 1985.  He worked in several research positions at Rockefeller and Harvard universities from 1985 to 1991 until joining Penn State as an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in 1992.  He was named associate professor in 1997 and professor in 1998.
 
 

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Last update:   24 April 2000