Tomas Lindahl

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Tomas Lindahl at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2015)

Tomas Robert Lindahl FRS FMedSci (born 28 January 1938) is a Swedish scientist specialising in cancer research.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with American chemist Paul Modrich and Turkish chemist Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.[8][9]

Lindahl was professor of medical chemistry at the University of Gothenburg 1978-82. He moved to England and joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) as a researcher in 1981.[10] From 1986 he was the first Director of Cancer Research UK's Clare Hall research institute in Hertfordshire. Since 2015 this has been part of the Francis Crick Institute.[11]

When the Royal Society elected him as a Fellow, his achievements were extraordinary (though rather technical):

"Dr. Tomas Lindahl is noted for his contributions to the comprehension of DNA repair at the molecular level in bacterial and mammalian cells. He was the first to isolate a mammalian DNA ligase and to describe a totally unanticipated novel group of DNA glycosylases as mediators of DNA excision repair. He has also discovered a unique class of enzymes in mammalian cells, namely the methyltransferases, which mediate the adaptive response to alkylation of DNA and has shown that the expression of these enzymes is regulated by the ada gene...
Apart from providing profound insights into the nature of the DNA repair process his very important contributions promise to facilitate the design of more selective chemotherapeutic drugs for the treatment of cancer. Lindahl has also made a number of significant contributions to understanding at the DNA level the mechanism of transformation of B-lymphocytes by the Epstein-Barr virus. The most notable of these was the first description of the occurrence in lymphoid cells of closed circular duplex viral DNA".[12]

References[change | change source]

  1. Lindahl, T. (1993). "Instability and decay of the primary structure of DNA". Nature. 362 (6422): 709–15. doi:10.1038/362709a0. PMID 8469282. S2CID 4283694.
  2. Wood, R.D. (2001). "Human DNA Repair Genes". Science. 291 (5507): 1284–9. doi:10.1126/science.1056154. PMID 11181991. S2CID 17375001.
  3. Satoh, M.S.; Lindahl, T. (1992). "Role of poly(ADP-ribose) formation in DNA repair". Nature. 356 (6367): 356–358. doi:10.1038/356356a0. PMID 1549180. S2CID 4364270.
  4. Trewick, S.C.; Henshaw, T.F.; Hausinger, R.P.; Lindahl, T; Sedgwick, B (2002). "Oxidative demethylation by Escherichia coli AlkB directly reverts DNA base damage". Nature. 419 (6903): 174–8. doi:10.1038/nature00908. PMID 12226667. S2CID 4324333.
  5. Barnes, D.E.; Lindahl, T (2004). "Repair and genetic consequences of endogenous DNA base damage in mammalian cells". Annual Review of Genetics. 38: 445–76. doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.38.072902.092448. PMID 15568983. S2CID 6965648.
  6. Yang, Y.G.; Lindahl, T; Barnes, D.E. (2007). "Trex1 exonuclease degrades ssDNA to prevent chronic checkpoint activation and autoimmune disease". Cell. 131 (5): 873–86. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2007.10.017. PMID 18045533. S2CID 2332259.
  7. Crow Y.J.; et al. (2006). "Mutations in the gene encoding the 3'-5' DNA exonuclease TREX1 cause Aicardi-Goutières syndrome at the AGS1 locus". Nature Genetics. 38 (8): 917–20. doi:10.1038/ng1845. PMID 16845398. S2CID 9069106.
  8. Broad, William J. (2015-10-07). "Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for DNA Studies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-10-07.
  9. Staff (7 October 2015). "The Nobel Prize in chemistry 2015 - DNA repair – providing chemical stability for life" (PDF). Nobel Prize. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
  10. "Cancer Research UK Grants & Research – Tomas Lindahl". Archived from the original on 2008-05-23. Retrieved 2008-11-10.
  11. "4 ways that Tomas Lindahl’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry revolutionised cancer research" Archived 2015-10-08 at the Wayback Machine, by Emma Smith, CRUK Science blog, October 7, 2015
  12. "Lindahl, Tomas Robert: EC/1988/20". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2014-11-21. Retrieved 2015-10-08.