Jacob, François (fräNswä` zhäkôb`), 1920–, French biologist, educated at the Sorbonne. His medical studies were interrupted by World War II. He joined the Free French Forces and fought in Africa and during the liberation of Paris. In 1950 he joined the Pasteur Institute, and in 1964 he became professor at the Collège de France. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod for work in genetics genome, or characteristic set of genes, that contains the total genetic information for an individual organism. In many familiar organisms two genes for each trait are present in each individual, and these paired genes, both governing the same trait, are called

alleles.
..... Click the link for more information. , especially his proposal, with Monod, of a mechanism for the regulation of the expression of genes gene, the structural unit of inheritance in living organisms. A gene is, in essence, a segment of DNA that has a particular purpose, i.e., that codes for (contains the chemical information necessary for the creation of) a specific enzyme or other protein.
..... Click the link for more information. . Jacob and Monod coined the term messenger RNA. Jacob's writings include The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity (1974).

Jacob, François

(born June 17, 1920, Nancy, France) French biologist. After receiving his doctorate, he went to work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Beginning in 1958, he worked with Jacques Monod studying the regulation of bacterial enzyme synthesis. They discovered regulator genes, so called because they control the activities of other genes. Jacob and Monod also proposed the existence of an RNA messenger, a partial copy of DNA that carries genetic information to other parts of the cell. The two men shared a 1965 Nobel Prize with André Lwoff.