Jacob, François

Abstract

François Jacob (1920–2013) was a French geneticist and molecular biologist who provided much of the evidence for gene regulation, first in bacteria and their viruses, and in later work, in mammalian development. Jacob spent most of his scientific career at the Pasteur Institute in Paris associated with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff with whom he shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965. Jacob was one of the main founders of bacterial genetics and helped to synthesize physiological genetics and transmission genetics into a unified field of study. His work on the genetic structure and regulation of lactose metabolism in E. coli, together with his study of lambda bacteriophage lysogeny, led to the operon concept of gene regulation that Jacob developed along with Monod. He collaborated extensively with Elie Wollman in studies of bacterial genetic conjugation, and together they developed the episome concept for extrachromosomal gene organization. In later work Jacob extended his interest in gene regulation to include developmental genetics, and he characterized the role of homeobox-containing genes involved in early mouse development. (editor)