Jacob, François

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, especially his proposal, with Monod, of a mechanism for the regulation of the expression of genes. Jacob and Monod coined the term messenger RNA. Jacob's writings include The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity (1974).

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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.

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Jacob, François 

Born June 17, 1920, in Nancy. French biologist.

Jacob graduated from the medical department of the University of Paris. He became a doctor of medicine in 1947. From 1940 to 1944 he was a member of de Gaulle’s Free French forces; he was wounded and awarded the Order of Liberation. Jacob joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1950. In 1960 he became head of the department of microbial genetics and in 1965 professor of the subdepartment of cellular genetics at the College de France. His works on the genetics of bacterial cells and viruses deal with genetic exchange between bacteria and phage, the genetics of lysogeny, the concept of episomes (1958), hypotheses (with J. Monod) on the transfer of genetic information with the participation of messenger RNA and on the mechanism of genetic regulation of protein synthesis in bacteria (the concept of operon). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965 with A. Lwoff and J. Monod.

WORKS

“Genetic Regulatory Mechanisms in the Synthesis of Proteins.” Journal of Molecular Biology, 1961, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 318–56. (With J. Monod.)
“Méchanismes biochimiques et génétiques de la régulation dans la cellule bactérienne.” Bulletin de la Société de Chimie Biologique,gique, 1964, vol. 46, no. 12, pp. 1499–1532. (With J. Monod.)
“Génétique de la cellule bactérienne.” In Les prix Nobel en 1965. Stockholm, 1966. Pages 212–32.
In Russian translation:
Pol i genetika bakterii. Moscow, 1962. (With E. Wolmann.)