Born in New York City to Polish Jewish immigrants, Axel grew up in Brooklyn.[1] He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1963,[2] (along with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alexander Rosenberg), received his B.A. in 1967 from Columbia University, and his M.D. in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University. However, he was poorly suited to medicine and graduated on the promise to his department chairman that he would not practice clinically.[3] He found his calling in research and returned to Columbia later that year, eventually becoming a full professor in 1978.
Research and career
Richard Axel circa 2008
During the late 1970s, Axel, along with microbiologist Saul J. Silverstein and geneticist Michael H. Wigler, discovered a technique of cotransformation via transfection, a process which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
A family of patents, now colloquially referred to as the "Axel patents", covering this technique were filed for February 1980 and were issued in August 1983.[10] As a fundamental process in recombinant DNA research as performed at pharmaceutical and biotech companies, this patent proved quite lucrative for Columbia University, earning it almost $100 million a year at one time, and a top spot on the list of top universities by licensing revenue.[10] The Axel patents expired in August 2000.
In their landmark paper published in 1991,[11] Buck and Axel clonedolfactory receptors, showing that they belong to the family of G protein coupled receptors. By analyzing rat DNA, they estimated that there were approximately one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammaliangenome. This research opened the door to the genetic and molecular analysis of the mechanisms of olfaction. In their later work, Buck and Axel have shown that each olfactory receptor neuron remarkably only expresses one kind of olfactory receptor protein and that the input from all neurons expressing the same receptor is collected by a single dedicated glomerulus of the olfactory bulb.[12]
Axel's primary research interest is on how the brain interprets the sense of smell, specifically mapping the parts of the brain that are sensitive to specific olfactory receptors. He holds the titles of University Professor at Columbia University, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Pathology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition to contributions to neurobiology, Axel has also made seminal discoveries in immunology, and his lab was one of the first to identify the link between HIV infection and immunoreceptor CD4.
In addition to making contributions as a scientist, Axel has also mentored many leading scientists in the field of neurobiology. Seven of his trainees have become members of the National Academy of Sciences, and currently six of his trainees are affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's investigator and early scientist award programs.
Richard Axel is a distinguished molecular biologist and neuroscientist. He developed gene transfer techniques that permit the introduction of virtually any gene into any cell permitting the production of a large number of clinically important proteins and leading to the isolation of a gene for CD4, the cellular receptor for the AIDS virus, HIV. He then applied molecular biology to neuroscience revealing over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odours, a discovery for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 2004. He currently explores how odour recognition is translated into internal representations in the brain.[16]
Personal life
Axel is married to fellow scientist and olfaction pioneer Cornelia Bargmann.[17] Previously, he had been married to Ann Axel, who is a social worker at Columbia University Medical Center. Owing to his tall stature, Axel played basketball during high school.[17]
^Pellicer, A; Wigler, M; Axel, R; Silverstein, S (1978). "The transfer and stable integration of the HSV thymidine kinase gene into mouse cells". Cell. 14 (1): 133–41. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(78)90308-2. PMID208776. S2CID20851317.
^Pellicer, A; Robins, D; Wold, B; Sweet, R; Jackson, J; Lowy, I; Roberts, J. M.; Sim, G. K.; Silverstein, S; Axel, R (1980). "Altering genotype and phenotype by DNA-mediated gene transfer". Science. 209 (4463): 1414–22. Bibcode:1980Sci...209.1414P. doi:10.1126/science.7414320. PMID7414320.
^Wigler, M; Sweet, R; Sim, G. K.; Wold, B; Pellicer, A; Lacy, E; Maniatis, T; Silverstein, S; Axel, R (1979). "Transformation of mammalian cells with genes from procaryotes and eucaryotes". Cell. 16 (4): 777–85. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(79)90093-x. PMID222468. S2CID25495031.
^Wigler, M; Silverstein, S; Lee, L. S.; Pellicer, A; Cheng, Yc; Axel, R (1977). "Transfer of purified herpes virus thymidine kinase gene to cultured mouse cells". Cell. 11 (1): 223–32. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(77)90333-6. PMID194704. S2CID46090608.
^Maddon, P. J.; Dalgleish, A. G.; McDougal, J. S.; Clapham, P. R.; Weiss, R. A.; Axel, R (1986). "The T4 gene encodes the AIDS virus receptor and is expressed in the immune system and the brain". Cell. 47 (3): 333–48. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(86)90590-8. PMID3094962. S2CID20377918.