The 2011 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal: James Haber

The Genetics Society of America annually honors members who have made outstanding contributions to genetics. The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal recognizes a lifetime contribution to the science of genetics. The Genetics Society of America Medal recognizes particularly outstanding contributions to the science of genetics over the past 30 years. The George W. Beadle Medal recognizes distinguished service to the field of genetics and the community of geneticists. The Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education recognizes individuals or groups who have had a significant, sustained impact on genetics education at any level, from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond. The Novitski Prize recognizes an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in solving significant problems in biological research through the application of genetic methods. We are pleased to announce the 2011 awards.

IN recognition of his lifetime contributions to the field of genetics, James Haber is the 2011 recipient of the Thomas Hunt Morgan medal awarded by the Genetics Society of America (GSA). Using budding yeast as a model system throughout his career, Jim has been a major contributor to our understanding of the processing and repair of double-strand breaks in DNA. Double-strand break repair plays an essential role in ensuring genomic stability, and defects in these processes are implicated in cancer and aging. In addition to his pioneering work, Jim is honored for his contributions to the mentorship and training of young scientists, his collaborations and interactions with others in the field, and for his service to the genetics community.

Like many outstanding geneticists, Jim began his scientific career in a different field. Jim started as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley with Dan Koshland in the Biochemistry Department, studying the cooperative binding of oxygen to hemoglobin. It was in his postdoctoral work with Harlyn Halvorson at the University of Wisconsin, and later at Brandeis University, where he was introduced to the discipline of genetics and the organism on which he would focus his career, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Jim's first article with Halvorson concerned monitoring cell cycle events in yeast undergoing sporulation in synchrony (Haber and Halvorson 1972). This theme of using synchronous cultures to follow molecular events is echoed in his later work on double-strand break repair. Isamu Takano, while a visiting scientist in Halvorson's lab, introduced Jim to the genetic puzzle of homothallic (HO) mating-type switching in yeast, a puzzle that still occupies his time. In 1972, Jim joined the faculty of the Biology Department at Brandeis University.

In a Perspectives article published in Genetics (Haber 2006), Jim credits his teaching obligations at Brandeis, which compelled him to go beyond his specialty, for his development as a geneticist. Jim had never taken a traditional genetics course (he did take the Yeast Genetics course taught by Gerry Fink and Fred Sherman in its first year at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) but learned genetics through teaching Introductory Genetics to undergraduate students. His work in the early 1980s focused on breakage of dicentric chromosomes and chromosome loss (including the isolation of the first chromosome loss mutant chl1) (McCusker and Haber 1981; Haber and Thorburn 1984; Haber et al. 1984). Jim credits this work as a direct result of his teaching of the classical genetic experiments of Barbara McClintock and Lillian Morgan in maize and Drosophila. Jim would later meet Barbara McClintock and proudly displays in his home the multicolored corn cobs she gave to him.

Jim hit his stride in the 1980s by pioneering the physical monitoring of recombination reactions in vivo, using synchronous meiotic cultures and Southern hybridization; he would later extend this to the process of gene conversion during HO-induced mating-type switching in mitotic cultures. In an approach that he calls “in vivo biochemistry,” Jim adopted newly emerging molecular biological techniques (learned from Brandeis colleagues Michael Rosbash and Pieter Wensink) and applied them to classical genetic questions. Using this approach, Jim defined distinct steps during the processing of double-strand breaks and identified the genetic factors that influence them. Long after the mechanism of mating-type switching was largely determined, Jim continues to mine the system to investigate a myriad of events related to break processing, including resection of DNA ends; processing of annealed ends; recombination protein recruitment; recombination site preference; new telomere addition; break-induced replication; nonhomologous end-joining; mutagenesis associated with break repair and establishment; and maintenance and recovery from a cell cycle checkpoint response. Jim loves a puzzle and often strays into additional fields where genetics leads him. At last count, Jim has published 228 articles.

Jim is a superb colleague. Since I joined the Brandeis faculty in 1989, Jim's and my labs have participated in a weekly “Recombination Club”—a journal club in which we keep up to date with current literature, but also delve into old papers with a fresh eye. I cannot imagine what my perspective in the field would be without our frequent discussions. Although the focus of my work is on bacterial DNA repair, this interaction allows me “to speak yeast as a second language” and keeps me apprised of developments and questions concerning repair in eukaryotic cells. Jim mentored me through my first teaching experiences, the establishment of a research lab, and the negotiation of family and scientific life while weathering the ups and downs of a research career. Jim has never shirked the responsibilities of university life: he is the current Director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Science Research Center and continues to teach a semester course on genetics each year to undergraduates or graduate students. Jim has always been supportive and protective of new faculty, and I attribute the collegial and high-functioning character of the Biology Department at Brandeis to his leadership.

Jim has also taken an outward-looking perspective. He thinks deeply about phenomena outside of yeast, from bacteria to humans. He has written an extraordinary number of thoughtful reviews and commentary. Jim and I often vet each other's manuscripts and grants, and I am continually astounded by the magnitude of his contributions: for example, in the 5-year period from 1997 to 2001 he published 14 review articles! In this way, Jim has been able to communicate important problems to the field, establish the relevance of discoveries in yeast to other organisms, and illuminate principles and mechanisms that are universal. In addition to his published work, Jim is always an enthusiastic participant at scientific conferences, both during the formal proceedings and in the informal discussions that follow.

Jim's approach toward problem solving is highly collaborative, and he has often been the catalyst for such interactions. Of particular note is Jim's long-standing collaboration with Marco Foiani (with whom he has 10 publications) at the University of Milan to study the checkpoint response to DNA damage. Their collaboration began at a Keystone DNA Replication and Recombination conference that they both attended, where Jim sought out Marco, introduced himself, and proceeded to set up daily breakfast discussions at the guest house in which they were staying. Jim is particularly proud of his co-authored article with Doug Koshland, at the University of California at Berkeley, the son of his graduate mentor.

One legacy of great scientists is the people whom they train and recruit into the field. In the field of recombination and repair, I know of no one with better credentials in this respect than Jim. The enjoyment that he takes in his work is clearly transmitted to his students and postdoctoral fellows. Monica Colaiacovo, a former graduate student of Jim's and now an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School who studies meiosis in Caenorhabditis elegans, wrote me, “One of the main things that positively impacted me during my experience as a graduate student in Jim's lab was the incredible enthusiasm he has for science. He was always excited to hear about your results, always engaged in discussion during group meetings and our journal clubs, and he was always discussing models and ideas (from breakfast through beer hour at the end of the day) during scientific conferences.” Throughout the 20 plus years I have known him, I have observed the ways in which Jim donates his time generously to all, from postdoctoral fellows to undergraduates in the lab. Jim is quite proud and supportive of his scientific offspring, both personally and professionally.

Jim continues to serve the scientific community through work outside the university. He has organized the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) conferences on “Genetic Recombination and Chromosomal Rearrangements” and on “Yeast Chromosome Structure and Segregation.” He has served on the editorial boards of Molecular and Cell Biology, Molecular Cell, PLoS Biology, PLoS Genetics, and DNA Repair. He participates in the Coalition of Life Sciences policy committee and the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus and has sat on the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Counselors. For the Genetics Society of America, he has served on its Board of Directors and as GSA Secretary. Jim was elected as a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and to the National Academy of Science in 2010.

Jim's productivity has not waned and he has no plans to retire, so, despite this award for “lifetime contributions,” we anticipate more to come.

Figure 1.

James Haber