October 4, 1995 Contact: Robert Irion (408/459-2495)

PACKARD FOUNDATION AWARDS $500,000 TO UC SANTA CRUZ BIOLOGIST

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Molecular biologist Charles Wilson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has received a $500,000 fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation of Los Altos, the foundation announced today (October 4). Wilson is one of twenty young researchers across the U.S. to earn the prestigious fellowships, worth $100,000 per year for five years.

The fellowships recognize researchers who have shown unusual creative ability in the first three years of their faculty careers. They are designed to encourage young scientists and engineers to pursue innovative research, partly by reducing the time-consuming and uncertain process of competing for federal grants.

Each year, the Packard Foundation invites about 50 universities to participate in the fellowship program, which was established in 1988. UCSC joined the exclusive list of institutions in 1993. Each university may nominate two members of its faculty per year. The 1995 winners represent institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Caltech, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco.

"Without question, the Packard Fellows are among the brightest group of young people in the nation, if not the world," says former presidential science adviser Allan Bromley of Yale, who served on the fellowship review panel. "Prior to World War II, almost all the leading scientists and engineers in the country were educated through the generosity of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. I believe the Packard Foundation is poised to play the same role as we move into the 21st century."

An assistant professor of biology, Wilson is the second scientist at UCSC to receive a Packard Fellowship. Last year, assistant professor of chemistry Joseph Puglisi was the first. Both Puglisi and Wilson are part of the Center for the Molecular Biology of RNA, an interdisciplinary group of researchers at UCSC who study the remarkable molecule RNA. A cousin of DNA, RNA performs a vast range of critical functions in every living cell, helping to interpret DNA's genetic instructions and to make the proteins necessary for life.

Wilson studies the structure and function of RNA with special techniques. First, he attempts to learn fine details about the three- dimensional layouts of the complex molecules by making crystals of the RNAs. Probing such crystals with x-rays can reveal the exact positions of the atoms within, which will help scientists discover how RNA molecules actually function. Second, he uses test-tube experiments to create new types of RNA that can carry out special reactions. The experiments are, in effect, a rapid-fire simulation of evolution on the early earth.

Ultimately, the efforts of Wilson and others to understand RNA may lead to new types of drugs that interfere with particular targets in a diseased cell. The work also will shed light on a less practical but fascinating riddle: How did life itself arise from the chemical stew that simmered on earth for hundreds of millions of years? RNA, many researchers believe, played the central role in that original birth.

Earlier this year, Wilson received his first grant as an independent researcher from the National Institutes of Health, the major federal funding agency for research in medicine and basic biology. The grant will provide $349,790 in direct costs over the next five years. Together, the NIH grant and the Packard Fellowship will help Wilson support more researchers and students in his laboratory and pay for advanced equipment and supplies.

Wilson, age 31, earned his B.A. in chemistry and biology and his M.A. in cell biology in 1986, both from Boston University, and his Ph.D. in biophysics from UC San Francisco in 1991. He was a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow for three years at the Department of Molecular Biology of Massachusetts General Hospital before coming to UCSC in 1994.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation was created in 1964 to support and encourage organizations dependent on private funding and volunteer leadership. It makes grants for programs in the arts, community, marine biology, environment, population, education, and children's health.

Editor's note: You may reach Wilson at (408) 459-5129 (laboratory) or (408) 459-5126 (office). A photo of Wilson with some of his lab equipment is available from the Public Information Office.

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