Name David Hogness | ||
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Education California Institute of Technology (1949–1952) Awards International Prize for Biology, Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada | ||
David Swenson Hogness (November 17, 1925 in Oakland, California) is an American biochemist, geneticist, and developmental biologist and emeritus professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California.
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Life
Hogness' parents were the chemists Thorfin R. Hogness and Phoebe S. Hogness. Hogness acquired his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1949 at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and in 1952, his PhD in biology and chemistry. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked with a scholarship of the National Research Council with Jacques Monod at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and with a grant from the National Science Foundation at the New York University in New York City.
In 1955 Hogness became an instructor of microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and was promoted to an assistant professor in 1957. In 1959, he moved to Stanford University. In 1961 he became an associate professor and in 1966, he received a full professorship in developmental biology. He has been professor emeritus since 1999.
Hogness married Judith Gore in 1948, the couple has two sons.
Research
Hogness was essential to understanding the ontogeny of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly). He examined the role of the hormone ecdysone in the development of the fruit fly. In 1978, Hogness and his group identified the TATA box (Goldberg-Hogness box) as the start sequence for the transcription of genes in eukaryotes. Hogness' work contributed to the discovery that the genetic material of eukaryotes consists of non-coding (introns) and coding (exons) sections and that the expression of numerous genes is regulated by so-called cis-elements. Hogness contributed to the fusion of genetics, molecular biology and developmental biology.