The Scientist Staff | Jul 23, 1989 | 6 min read
“I didn’t need to think about the offer very long,” Tjian says with a laugh, recalling his initial shock. HHMI was offering to bankroll Tjian’s research on DNA transcription for a minimum of seven years, and possibly for the rest of his career. And he wasn’t the only one. As the nation’s largest private sponsor of biomedical research, the institute spent about $200 million last year supporting senior investigators like Tjian. After becoming a Hughes Instit