DAVID ROOS
E. Otis Kendall Professor of Biology, University of Pennsylvania
Director, Penn Genomics Institute, 2001 to 2006COURTESY OF DAVID ROOS
David Roos had been studying nucleated parasites such as Toxoplasma and Plasmodium (malaria) for several years when he decided to ask a simple question: How do antibiotics such as clindamycin work in treating both malaria and toxoplasmosis? The answer turned out to be a discovery that simultaneously solved three biological mysteries, rewrote biology textbooks, and helped to launch the field of evolutionary cell biology.
Clindamycin and related drugs kill bacteria by inhibiting the ability of bacterial ribosomes to synthesize proteins, but don’t affect ribosomes in eukaryotic cells, including those of humans. Yet both malaria and toxoplasmosis are caused by eukaryotic unicellular parasites, which clindamycin also treats. In 1996, Roos, a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania, and then-graduate student Maria Fichera tested three ...
