A duo of geneticists from Harvard Medical School and Rutgers University has been awarded the 2015 Albert Lasker Award in recognition of their work illuminating the process by which living organisms detect damage to DNA and act to repair it.
The Lasker Foundation announced Monday it will bestow its award for basic medical research on geneticist Stephen J. Elledge of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and microbiologist Evelyn M. Witkin of Rutgers University.
Working first with bacteria and, progressively, with higher organisms, Elledge and Witkin explored how genetic mutations occur, and why they don't routinely wreak the kind of havoc seen, for instance, in cancers.