Profile of Eugene V. Koonin

Abstract

For evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene V. Koonin, science is not just a job or even a career—it is intrinsic to how he experiences the world. “It’s a way of living and thinking,” he says. “It’s effectively a devotion or dedication to creative but rational thinking. These are things that can apply to everything and anything in the world.” Koonin (seated, third from left) and his research group at the NCBI. Seated to the right of Koonin is Staff Scientist Kira Makarova, with whom Koonin identified the genetic region known as CRISPR-Cas. Image courtesy of Yuri I. Wolf (photographer). Koonin, of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Institutes of Health, and a recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, pursues his devotion in the field of evolution, investigating what functions genes perform and how organisms gain and lose genes over time. Koonin hopes to weave together clues in genome sequences into a story on the origin and progression of life on Earth. Koonin was born in 1956 and raised in Moscow, then the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). His closest family connection to science came through his maternal grandparents, who both worked in the medical field. “As long as I remember myself, I wanted to be a biologist,” he says. During his elementary school years, the structure of DNA came to the public attention, and Koonin remembers feeling fascination with the helical structure and the concept of a genetic code. In middle school, Koonin participated in magnet groups, akin to clubs, to pursue science. Through these groups, he attended lectures and laboratory courses taught by eminent researchers from the USSR Academy of Sciences. When enrolling at Moscow State University, Koonin initially planned to study molecular biology, but felt entranced by a relatively new …