@Mrwemt gammsnts” EUGENE GARFIELD INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION* 3501 MARKET ST, PHI LADE LPHIA. PA I9104 The 1985 NAS Award for Excellence h Scientific Reviewfng Goes to Ira Herskowitz for I-Ifs Reviews of Phage Biology Number 16 Amil 22.1985 Ira Herskowitz, molecular biologist, ioral sciences. This year, Herskowitz has been awarded the 1985 National was selected from among a number of Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for outstanding candidates in the biological Excellence in Scientific Reviewing. sciences. The last recipient of the NAS Editor of the Journal of Molecular Biol- Award for reviews in the biological sci- ogy, and professor in the Department of ences was Victor McKusick, Johns Hop- Biochemistry and Biophysics, University kins University School of Medicine. He of California, San Francisco, Herskowitz was recognized in 1982 for his reviews of will receive the award at the academy’s basic and clinical aspects of human 122nd annual meeting in Washington, genetics. 1 DC, on April 22. The NAS cited Herskowitz for his “in- He is the seventh scientist so honored, cisive reviews of phage biology, ” partic- and, at the age of 39, is the youngest ularly for his 1973 and 1980 reviewsz,s of among th~ group of outstanding authors bacteriophage lambda, His most-recent of scientific reviews. I hope this will en- review on lambda has just been pub- courage other young scientists to write lished.q Bacteriophage lambda is a bac- reviews. terial virus that has been used extensive- IS I@ and Annual Reviews Inc. have ly by geneticists to study how certain cosponsored this award and its $5,000 genes are turned on and off in the micro- honorarium since its establishment in organism Eschen”chia coli (E. coli). Un- 1979. The award honors James Murray like most viruses, which invariably Luck, who founded Annual f?evie ws and replicate themselves within cells and served as its editor-in-chief until his destroy the infected host cell, the bac- retirement in 1969. Luck remains on the teriophage lambda does not always kill edltonal committee of the Annual Re- the E. coli cells that it has entered. In vie w of Biochemistry, which he started fact, under some environmental condk in 1932, and on the board of directors of tions, infection of E. coli with bacterio- Annual Reviews Inc. phage lambda results in a “lysogenic The NAS Award recipient is selected response, ” in which the host cell survives by an independent committee appointed and stably acquires the genetic material by the NAS. Neither 1S1 nor Annual Re- of the bacteriophage. views is involved in the nomination of Herskowitz was cited by the NAS for, candidates or in the selection oi the re- among other things, hk discussions of cipient. The discipline from which re- gene regulation and cell physiology that viewers are chosen rotates annually govern whether infection with bacterio- among the biological sciences, the phys- phage lambda either kills the host cell ical sciences, including mathematics and (the lytic response) or becomes incorpo- engineering, and the social and behav- rated in the cell’s genetic material (the 151 interest in yeast and lambda genes stems from the same “ultimate question . ... How do you turn genes on and off? Put another way, what molecular mecha- nisms are responsible for an undtiferen- tiated cell deciding to become, for ex- ample, a liver or brain cell?”T In 1972, Herskowitz joined the De- partment of Biology and Institute of Mo- lecular Biology at the University of Ore- gon, Eugene, where he eventually be- came a full professor. In 1981, he moved to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, where he is professor and head of the Division of Genetics. In ad- dition to teaching and continuing his research, Herskowitz became vice chair- man of his department in 1982. In 1983, the American Society for Microbiology, the American Associa- lysogenic response). His own research tion of Immunologists, and the Ameri- has contributed to the understanding of can Society for Experimental Pathology this lysis-lysogeny decision. recognized Herskowitz’s contributions to lambda and yeast biology by awarding hlm the 1983 Eli Lilly Award in Blographkal Information Microbiology and Immunology. The Born in 1946 in Brooklyn, New York, award, which is accompanied by a Herskowitz was raised in the Midwest. $2,000 honorarium, is given annually to His decision to enter the field of genetics a researcher under 35 in the US or is fitting, since he is an identical twin (his Canada for fundamental research in mi- brother, Joel, is a pediatric neurologist crobiology or immunology. in Boston) and his father, Irwin H., is a Herskowitz is currently president of Drosophila geneticist and author of a the Genetics Society of America, editor widely used textbook on genetics. s of the Journal of Molecular Biology, and Herskowitz was introduced to bacte- associate editor of both the Annual riophage genetics at the California Insti- Review of Genetics and Genetics. He tute of Technology, Pasadena, where he also is on the editorial board of Mo[ecu - received his BS degree in 1%7. He did lar and Ce[lular Bioiogy. He has also his doctoral work on bacteriophage served as associate editor for Virology, lambda with Ethan R. Signer, in the De- and has lectured extensively throughout partment of Biology, Massachusetts In- the US, including special lectures at stitute of Technology (MIT), Cam- Notre Dame, Wkconsin, Harvard, and bridge. The 1970 papefi based on this re- Princeton. search was cited in at least 100 subse- quent publications. Herskowitz re- Why Write Reviews? mained at MIT for postdoctoral work with David Botstein, in the Department Why does this obnously busy person of Biology, during which time he also take on the demanding task of writing served as an instructor in the same scientfilc reviews? The primary reason is department, During this period, he a desire to make bacteriophage lambda began to do research on yeast gene ex- understandable to as wide an audience pression. Herskowitz explains that his as possible. He explains: “I know that 152 the areas in which I’ve written reviews mal communication processes of science are considered arcane and incompre- are often crucial elements in the ad- hensible. So much is known about lamb- vances reported formally in the liter- da that unless you’re working in it, it’s in- ature. accessible. That’s where I hope I’ve been successful—in making it accessible to Research Front Data people.”7 Like several other winners of the NAS Herskowitz has published more than Award, Herskowitz perceives the signifi- 50 papers since 1970, which together cance of the relationship between re- have received more than 1,400 citations. view writing and teaching. In both, he These papers are divided between publi- tries to communicate the link between cations dealing with lambda genetics information and ideas. He explains: “A and publications on yeast genetics. nucleotide sequence or a mutant is just These latter papers deal largely with the raw data. The important step is to take mechanism by which yeast ceil type is this information and make logical and determined. This work centers around critical deductions based on it. I try to studying the regulatow genes coded by a stress that in teaching, in individual re- master regulatory locus. Herskowitz and search projects, and in review articles.”T hk colleagues have also extensively In addition to emphasizing the link be- studied the process by which a cell of tween ideas and information, Hersko- one sex will give rise to a cell of the op- witz tries, in his reviews, to create what posite sex, which, in turn, will produce a he terms “documents of record.. .a pic- cell of the same sex as the first cell, They ture of the state-of-the-field at a given have developed a “cassette” model for time.” He cites as examples of thk per- this process, which compares the activi- spective the “fabulous amount of prog- ty of the mating genes in the cell to a ress” made and recorded in hk reviews tape recorder with interchangeable between 1973 and 1980. He notes, cassettes. Briefly, they compare the site “There is an obvious progression from on the chromosome that regulates the one review to the next. The fwst review cell’s sex with the “playback” function of said that we know a lot but we still don’t a tape recorder, and the sex-determining know what we want to know about lamb- “jumping” genes that occupy that site in da. The second one said that we know a alternate generations with inter- lot more, and now we have a pretty clear changeable cassettes.g One of Hersk& idea of what we want to know. “TAppar- witz’s papers describing thk modello ently, these reviews have been more is a core document in research front than “hwtorical records.” The 1973 #82-2456, “Regulation of yeast mating paper has been his most-cited and per- type: transposition, chromatin struc- haps most-influential publication.z His ture, and control of transcription.” 1980 paper3 has already been cited at A list of Herskowitz’s review papers is least 70 times. included in the references cited at the Frank Stahl, who was Herskowitz’s end of this essay .z-d,11-13As mentioned colleague in the Department of Biology, earlier, his most-influential work is the University of Oregon, provides another 1973 paper in Annual Review of Genet- perspective on Herskowitz’s talent for ic~, The role this review has played in reviewing. He describes Herskowitz as phage lambda research is evidenced 6’...a walking encyclopedia in the areas from the fact that it is a core paper in two in which he works.” Stahl notes that of the 1S1 research fronts shown in “.