Michael Young won the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on circadian clocks.MARIO MORGADO / THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITYToday (October 2), Rockefeller University biologist Michael Young and Brandeis University scientists Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash were named co-recipients of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on circadian rhythms. In 1984, Hall and Rosbash and, independently, Young, determined that a gene, period, was necessary for the maintenance of circadian rhythms in fruit flies. Young also identified two more genes that regulate period. Scientists have since discovered homologous circadian systems in mice and in humans.
Young spoke with The Scientist this afternoon.
The Scientist: In your opinion, what has been your most important scientific achievement?
Michael Young: I think if there was an early breakthrough moment, it was when we took a fly that had no behavioral rhythms, had no sleep/wake cycle, and we were able to inject purified DNA that was just the gene that we’d been working on that was from a normal fly, and were able to give rhythmicity back to a fly that previously had no rhythms. So we realized that we really could restore behavior with a gene. That was pretty exciting and sort of sent us on our way.
At that point, the next steps had everything to do with really digging into the ...
