Citizenship French, Swiss | Name Klaus Scherrer | |
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Born December 10, 1931
Schaffhouse, Switzerland ( 1931-12-10 ) | ||
Klaus Scherrer (Schaffhouse 10 December 1931 – ) is a French biologist of Swiss nationality. He is emeritus research director for the CNRS, member of the academia Europaea and the Brazilian academy of sciences. He is Professor honoris causa of University of Brasilia.
Biography
Scherrer obtained his PhD in biochemistry from école polytechnique fédérale de Zurich. He worked as a research assistant for James Darnell at MIT, where in 1962 he discovered the existence of giant rhybosomial and messenger RNA in animal cells, and observed for the first time the differentiation of pre-rhybosomic and functional rRNA. These discoveries made it possible to understand a fundamental process in cells, the production of precursor RNA that is then metabolized in order to extract the expressed information.
He demonstrated the existence of messenger RNA in polyribosoms. He joined François Gros at the Institut Pasteur in 1963, and at the Institut de biologie physico-chimique (IBPC) in Paris, before founding in 1967, the laboratoire de biologie moléculaire de l'ISREC in Lausanne.
At the IBPC, he studied the structure of giant RNA of the messenger type in cells differentiation (avian erythroblasts) and formulated the hypothesis of the existence of pre-messengers pre-mRNA by analogy to pre-rRNA.
At ISREC he pursued the study of pre-rRNA and pre-mRNA, and extended his research to RNA-proteins (RNP) of the type pre-mRNP and functional mRNP. Inside the latter, he discovered the prosomes, a complex of "20S" of 28 proteic sub-units in a variable mosaic, associated to repressed mRNP of the cytoplasm, as well as to the pre-mRNP of the chromatin. These 20 S particles have also been identified later by others as the core of proteasomes 26S, where they are associated with 19S modules that regulate the enzymatic activity.
Back in France, he is nominated directeur de recherche at CNRS and worked at Institut Jacques Monod where he develops from 1973 to 2001 the analysis of primary transcripts (pre-mRNA) and of their metabolism in functional RNA within polyribosome. He also studied prosome as regulating modules associated to pre-mRNA et to mRNA at the level of chromatine and of the cytoskeleton and developed a clinic diagnosis based on that system. His research on the genomic DNA paved the way to the first tri-dimensionnal model of genomic DNA.
At the theoretical level, Klaus Scherrer has formulated the cascade regulation hypothesis, which represents an attempt to integrate within a single schematic frame the theoretical requirements and the experimental observations that concern the regulation of the protein synthesis within the eukaryotic cells. In collaboration with the mathematician Jürgen Jost, he proposed an analysis of the gene expressions based on information theory. He proposed for the first time an interpretation in terms of functional architecture of 98% of the non coding DNA of proteins.
Klaus Scherrer also translated into German (in collaboration with Jutta Scherrer) "The logic of Life" of François Jacob.