Jay C. Dunlap, PhD FASEB Board of Directors
Jay C. Dunlap, PhD, holds the Nathan Smith Chair at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Genetics, which he founded in 1999 and remains Professor of Biochemistry, the department he joined when he came to Dartmouth Medical School in 1984. His graduate training was in biology at Harvard (1979) followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California at Santa Cruz where he was supported by a Damon Runyon and later an NRSA fellowship.
The Dunlap lab has been continuously supported by the NIH since 1985 generally through multiple R01s and most recently also Program Project grant. The center of gravity for his research has been using the tools of classical and molecular genetics to understand the molecular bases of circadian rhythms in the model system Neurospora, in mammalian cells in culture, and in mammals. As the experience of jet-lag teaches us all, the circadian system is one of the overarching physiological regulatory processes in humans, impacting at the organ, tissue, and cellular level nearly every physiological process. Despite the whole organism level of control, the molecular basis of clocks lies at the single cell level, and nearly every cell type in humans, as in most other eukaryotes, contain a circadian oscillator. In fungi and animals this oscillator comprises negative feedback loop wherein a heterodimeric transcriptional activator, two proteins interacting via PAS domains, drives expression of a gene(s) encoding a protein(s) that feed(s) back to repress the activity of the heterodimer. With appropriate delays this feedback loop oscillates with a periodicity of once per day, and drives circadian regulation of myriad cellular processes. Human circadian misregulation can lead to metabolic syndrome, cardiac problems, developmental abnormalities, sleep syndromes, and psychiatric illnesses.
Dunlap served as a founding editor of Eukaryotic Cell (2001 – 2011), is co-editor in chief of Advances in Genetics, and serves on the board of G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. He is an
active member of the Genetics Society of America (Board of Directors 2009 – 2012), the American Society for Cell Biology, AAAS, and the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (treasurer 1992 – 94, President, 1998 - 2000).
He has served on the NSF Microbial Genetics panel and at NIH on the Microbial Genetics and Physiology Study Section as well as Special Study Sections, on selection panels for EUREKA and for New Innovator Awards, on the Board of Scientific Advisors for the NIMH, on the NIH Director's Pioneer Awards (2008, 2009; chair, 2011), and as a member of the National Advisory Council for General Medical Sciences (2000 – 2004, 2011).
He has authored or co-authored more than 150 research papers and reviews and one textbook, and is best known for his work elucidating the molecular mechanism of the biological clock in Neurospora and for determining the means through which circadian clocks are reset by light, work that led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences. In addition he has received a MERIT award from the NIH, and been awarded the Honma International Prize For Biological Rhythms Research, the Robert L. Metzenberg Award and George W. Beadle Medal from the GSA, and been elected as a fellow of the AAAS and to the American Academy of Microbiology.
Jay Dunlap can be reached by phone at 603-650-1108, by FAX at 603-650-1233, by email at [email protected], or by mail at 7400 Remsen, Department of Genetics, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH 03755.
His web page is http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/dunlaploros/
July 2012