Getting the message: How elucidation of messenger RNA formation empowered RNA therapeutics

Dr. Lynne Maquat is the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics who holds concomitant appointments in Pediatrics and in Oncology, Founding Director of the Center for RNA Biology, and Founding Chair of Graduate Women in Science at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. After obtaining her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undertaking post-doctoral work at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, she joined Roswell Park Cancer Institute before moving to the University of Rochester. Dr. Maquat’s research focuses on the molecular basis of human diseases, with particular interest in mechanisms of mRNA decay. Dr. Maquat discovered nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in human diseases in 1981 and, subsequently, the exon-junction complex (EJC) and how the EJC marks mRNAs for a quality-control “pioneer” round of protein synthesis. She also discovered Staufen-mediated mRNA decay, which mechanistically competes with NMD and, by so doing, new roles for short interspersed elements and long non-coding RNAs. Additionally, she has defined a new mechanism by which microRNAs are degraded, thereby regulating mRNAs so as to promote the cell cycle.

Maquat is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006); an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2006), the National Academy of Sciences (2011), and the National Academy of Medicine (2017); and a Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities (2012-3). She received the William C. Rose Award from the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (2014), a Canada Gairdner International Award (2015), the international RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award in Service (2010) and in Science (2017), the FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2018), the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science (2017), the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2018), the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Medal (2019), and the Wolf Prize in Medicine (2021). Maquat is well-known for her efforts to promote women in science.

Joan A. Steitz, Ph.D., is the Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.Steitz earned her BS in chemistry from Antioch College in 1963. Significant findings from her work emerged as early as 1967, when her Harvard PhD thesis with Jim Watson examined the test-tube assembly of a ribonucleic acid (RNA) bacteriophage (antibacterial virus) known as R17.

Steitz spent the next three years in postdoctoral studies at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where she used early methods for determining the biochemical sequence of RNA to study how ribosomes know where to initiate protein synthesis on bacterial mRNAs. In 1970, she was appointed assistant professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale, becoming full professor in 1978. At Yale, she established a laboratory dedicated to the study of RNA structure and function. In 1979, Steitz and her colleagues described a group of cellular particles called small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs), a breakthrough in understanding how RNA is spliced. Subsequently, her laboratory has defined the structures and functions of other noncoding RNPs, such as those that guide the modification of ribosomal RNAs, microRNAs and several produced by transforming herpesviruses.

Steitz is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, National Academy of Sciences, and Institute of Medicine. Her many honors include the U.S. Steel Foundation Award in Molecular Biology (1982); National Medal of Science (1986); FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2003); RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2004); Gairdner Foundation International Award (2006); Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2008) [shared with Elizabeth Blackburn]; Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2012); La grande médaille 2013 de l'Académie des sciences, Insititut de France; Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London (2014); Herbert Tabor Award, American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2015); Biopolymers Murray Goodman Memorial Prize, American Chemical Society (2015); William Clyde DeVane Award for Teaching Excellence, Yale University (2016); Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research (2016); ASCB Inaugural Fellow (2016); Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation  (2018); and the Wolf Prize in Medicine (shared with Lynne Maquat and Adrian Krainer). Dr. Steitz has been awarded 19 honorary degrees.