Carl Woese

Carl Woese
Born	July 15, 1928 (1928-07-15) Syracuse, New York
Residence	Urbana, Illinois
Citizenship	American
Nationality	United States
Fields	Microbiology
Institutions	University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Alma mater	Amherst College Yale University
Doctoral advisor	Ernest C. Pollard
Known for	Archaea
Notable awards	Leeuwenhoek Medal (1992) Selman A. Waksman Award (1995) National Medal of Science (2000) Crafoord Prize (2003)

Carl Richard Woese ( /ˈwoʊz/; born July 15, 1928 in Syracuse, New York) is an American microbiologist and physicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain or kingdom of life) in 1977 by phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, a technique pioneered by Woese and which is now standard practice. He was also the originator of the RNA world hypothesis in 1977, although not by that name. He currently holds the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair and is professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Life and education

Woese attended Deerfield Academy. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Amherst College in 1950 and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Yale University in 1953. In 1964, Woese joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Work and discoveries

Having defined Archaea as a new domain, Woese redrew the taxonomic tree. His three-domain system, based on genetic relationships rather than obvious morphologic similarities, divided life into 23 main divisions, incorporated within three domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya. Archaea are neither bacteria nor eukaryotes. They can be viewed as prokaryotes that are not bacteria.

Notably, Woese's elucidation of the tree of life shows the overwhelming diversity of microbial lineages; single-celled organisms represent the vast majority of the biosphere's genetic, metabolic, and ecologic niche diversity. As microbes are crucial for many biogeochemical cycles and to the continued function of the biosphere, Woese's efforts to clarify the evolution and diversity of microbes provided an invaluable service to ecologists and conservationists.

Phylogenetic tree based on Woese et al. rRNA analysis

Acceptance of the validity of Woese's classification was a slow process. Famous figures, including Salvador Luria and Ernst Mayr, objected to his division of the prokaryotes. Not all criticism of him was restricted to the scientific level. Not without reason has Woese been dubbed "Microbiology's Scarred Revolutionary" by the journal Science. The growing amount of supporting data led the scientific community to accept the Archaea by the mid-1980s. Today, few scientists cling to the idea of a unified Prokarya.

Woese also speculated about an era in which considerable horizontal gene transfer occurred between organisms. Species formed when organisms stopped treating genes from other organisms with equal importance to their own genes. Horizontal gene transfer during this era was responsible for the fast early evolution of complex biological structures.

Woese's work is also significant in terms of its implications for the search for life on other planets. Prior to Woese, Archaea were thought to be extreme organisms that evolved from the organisms more familiar to us. Many scientists now believe they are ancient, and may have robust evolutionary connections to the first organisms on Earth. Organisms similar to those archaea that exist in extreme environments may have developed on other planets, some of which harbor conditions conducive to extremophile life.

Honors and reputation

Woese was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984, was made a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, received the Leeuwenhoek Medal (microbiology's highest honor) in 1992, the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology in 1995 from the National Academy of Sciences, and was a National Medal of Science recipient in 2000. In 2003, he received the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2006, he was made a foreign member of the Royal Society.

Many microbial species, such as Pyrococcus woesei, Methanobrevibacterium woesei, and Conexibacter woesei, are named in his honor.

With regard to Woese's work on horizontal gene transfer as a primary evolutionary process, Professor Norman Pace of the University of Colorado at Boulder said, "I think Woese has done more for biology writ large than any biologist in history, including Darwin.... There's a lot more to learn, and he's been interpreting the emerging story brilliantly."

Publications

Books

• Woese, Carl (1967). The Genetic Code: the Molecular basis for Genetic Expression. New York: Harper & Row. 

Articles

• Woese, Carl R.; George E. Fox (1977). "Phylogenetic structure of the prokaryotic domain: the primary kingdoms.". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 74 (11): 5088–5090. ISSN 0027-8424. 
• Woese, Carl R. (1987-06-01). "Bacterial evolution.". Microbiological Reviews 51 (2): 221–271. http://mmbr.asm.org/content/51/2/221.short. 
• Woese, C R; O Kandler, M L Wheelis (1990). "Towards a natural system of organisms: proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya.". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 87 (12): 4576–4579. ISSN 0027-8424. http://www.pnas.org/content/87/12/4576.abstract. 
• Woese, Carl R. (2006). "How We Do, Don’t and Should Look at Bacteria and Bacteriology". The Prokaryotes. pp. 3–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30741-9_1. Retrieved 2010-04-21. 
• Woese, Carl R.; Nigel Goldenfeld (2009). "How the Microbial World Saved Evolution from the Scylla of Molecular Biology and the Charybdis of the Modern Synthesis". Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews 73 (1): 14–21. doi:10.1128/MMBR.00002-09. http://mmbr.asm.org/content/73/1/14.abstract. Retrieved 2011-12-27. 

See also

• Karl Stetter
• George E. Fox
• Bacterial phyla, the major lineages of Bacteria
• Thomas Gold

External links

• Woese's homepage