2021 George Streisinger Award Winner: Nancy Hopkins, PhD

Nancy Hopkins, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts, USA

Award Lecture - Developing Insertional Mutagenesis to Identify Essential Genes in Zebrafish: A Tale of Serendipity and Luck

Nancy Hopkins is the Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  A molecular biologist and geneticist, she obtained a PhD at Harvard working on gene expression in phage lambda. There, with Mark Ptashne, she showed that lambda repressor protein binds to specific sequences (operators) on DNA to control gene expression. She then studied DNA tumor viruses as a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Pollack and James D Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.  Hopkins joined the MIT faculty in 1973 where her lab researched mechanisms of leukemogenesis by mouse RNA tumor viruses. Her lab identified viral genes responsible for host range and oncogenicity including capsid protein and transcriptional enhancers.  Later she turned to the genetics of early vertebrate development using the zebrafish. Her lab developed a method of insertional mutagenesis for the fish that led to the identification and cloning of 25%of the genes essential for early zebrafish development and also led the lab to develop the fish as a genetic model for cancer.  Following a sabbatical at MDAnderson, Hopkins studied the prevention and early detection of cancer and advocated for increased attention to these approaches as a way to more rapidly reduce US cancer deaths.  In 1995 Hopkins chaired an MIT committee that later issued the 1999 Report on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT. She then served in MIT’s central administration under President Charles Vest, including on the Academic Council, in her role as Co-Chair with then MIT Provost Bob Brown of the first Council on Faculty Diversity.  She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The International Zebrafish Society (IZFS) established the George Streisinger Award to honor Dr. Streisinger's outstanding contribution to the field. The award recognizes a senior investigator who has done sustained and foundational work that has opened new possibilities within the zebrafish field that benefit all research today. Read more about the Streisinger Award and its past recipients here.