Former Therapeutic Radiology Fellow Awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Department of Therapeutic Radiology congratulates Aziz Sancar, a previous Fellow in the department, for being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Paul Modrich and Tomas Lindahl. The award was given for “mechanistic studies on DNA repair”. While at Yale from 1977-1982 in the laboratory of Dean Rupp, Aziz performed some of the initial elegant work elucidating the mechanism of nucleotide excision repair in E. coli, after which he went on to dissect the pathway in human cells at the University of North Carolina. While at Yale, Sancar, in collaboration with Rupp, developed approaches to identify DNA repair genes and produce their gene products, enabling their subsequent biochemical studies on Nucleotide Excision Repair. This lead to the discovery by Sancar that the DNA repair proteins themselves removed lesions from the DNA. “Aziz was extraordinarily devoted to his work” commented Dean Rupp. We are very proud of Aziz and we congratulate him on his tremendous achievement.

A list of papers co-authored by Sancar and Rupp:

1. Cloning of uvrA, lexC and ssb genes of Escherichia coli.Sancar A, Rupp WD. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1979 Sep 12;90(1):123-9.
2. Identification of the uvrA gene product.Sancar A, Wharton RP, Seltzer S, Kacinski BM, Clarke ND, Rupp WD. Mol Biol. 1981 May 5;148(1):45-62.
3. Identification of the uvrB gene product.Sancar A, Clarke ND, Griswold J, Kennedy WJ, Rupp WD. J Mol Biol. 1981 May 5;148(1):63-76
4. Identification of the uvrC gene product. Sancar A, Kacinski BM, Mott DL, Rupp WD. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1981 Sep;78(9):5450-4.
5. A general approach for purifying proteins encoded by cloned genes without using a functional assay: isolation of the uvrA gene product from radiolabeled maxicells. Kacinski BM, Sancar A, Rupp WD. Nucleic Acids Res. 1981 Sep 25;9(18):4495-508.
6. The uvrB gene of Escherichia coli has both lexA-repressed and lexA-independent promoters. Sancar GB, Sancar A, Little JW, Rupp WD. Cell. 1982 Mar;28(3):523-30.
7. LexA protein inhibits transcription of the E. coli uvrA gene in vitro. Sancar A, Sancar GB, Rupp WD, Little JW, Mount DW. Nature. 1982 Jul 1;298(5869):96-8.
8. Properties and regulation of the UVRABC endonuclease. Rupp WD, Sancar A, Sancar GB. Biochimie. 1982 Aug-Sep;64(8-9):595-8.
9. A novel repair enzyme: UVRABC excision nuclease of Escherichia coli cuts a DNA strand on both sides of the damaged region. Sancar A, Rupp WD. Cell. 1983 May;33(1):249-60.
10. Use of an Escherichia coli mutant strain permits measurement of single-stranded apurinic-apyrimidinic endonuclease in crude extracts: studies with untransformed cells and cells transformed with plasmids containing the uvrC gene. Schultz RA, Friedberg EC, Moses RE, Rupp WD, Sancar A, Sharma S. J Bacteriol. 1983 Jun;154(3):1459-61.
11. Reactions of the UVRABC excision nuclease with DNA damaged by diamminedichloroplatinum(II). Beck DJ, Popoff S, Sancar A, Rupp WD. Nucleic Acids Res. 1985 Oct 25;13(20):7395-412.
12. Simple method for identification of plasmid-coded proteins. Sancar A, Hack AM, Rupp WD. J Bacteriol. 1979 Jan;137(1):692-3.
13. Physical map of the recA gene.Sancar A, Rupp WD. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1979 Jul;76(7):3144-8.
14. Sequences of the recA gene and protein.Sancar A, Stachelek C, Konigsberg W, Rupp WD. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1980 May;77(5):2611-5.
15. Amplification of single-strand DNA binding protein in Escherichia coli. Chase JW, Whittier RF, Auerbach J, Sancar A, Rupp WD. Nucleic Acids Res. 1980 Jul 25;8(14):3215-27.
16. Sequences of the ssb gene and protein. Sancar A, Williams KR, Chase JW, Rupp WD. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1981 Jul;78(7):4274-8.
17. Nucleotide sequence of a recA operator mutation. LexA/operator-repressor binding/inducible repair.Uhlin BE, Volkert MR, Clark AJ, Sancar A, Rupp WD.
18. Analysis of mRNA synthesis following induction of the Escherichia coli SOS system. Markham BE, Harper JE, Mount DW, Sancar GB, Sancar A, Rupp WD, Kenyon CJ, Walker GC. J Mol Biol. 1984 Sep 15;178(2):237-48.