Paul L. Modrich

Paul L. Modrich
Paul L. Modrich, Nobel Laureate in chemistry in Stockholm December 2015
Born	Paul Lawrence Modrich (1946-06-13) June 13, 1946 Raton, New Mexico, U.S.
Nationality	United States
Fields	DNA mismatch repair
Institutions	Duke University Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Alma mater	MIT, Stanford University (PhD)
Known for	Clarification of cellular resistance to carcinogens
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2015)
Website Paul L. Modrich

Paul Lawrence Modrich (born June 13, 1946) is an American biochemist, James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received a Ph.D. degree in 1973 from Stanford University and an B.S. degree in 1968 from MIT. He is known for his research on DNA mismatch repair. Modrich received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015, jointly with Aziz Sancar and Tomas Lindahl.

Early life

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Paul Modrich presenting himself

Modrich was born on June 13, 1946, in Raton, New Mexico. He is of Croatian descent; his paternal grandfather and grandmother (of Montenegrin descent) immigrated to the United States from Croatia.

Research

Modrich joined Duke University's faculty in 1976 and has been a Howard Hughes Investigator since 1995. He works primarily on strand-directed mismatch repair. His lab demonstrated how DNA mismatch repair serves as a copyeditor to prevent errors from DNA polymerase. Matthew Meselson previously proposed the existence of recognition of mismatches. Modrich performed biochemical experiments to study mismatch repair in E. coli. They later searched for proteins associated with mismatch repair in humans.

Dr. Modrich is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.