Genetics Researcher Wins $500,000 Award (AP)

By CANDICE CHOI, Associated Press Writer

ALBANY, N.Y. - A biologist whose pioneering research in genetics led to the exploration of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's has been awarded the nation's richest prize in medicine and biomedical research.

Among medical awards, the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize is second only to the $1.4 million Nobel Prize in cash value. The award was to be presented Friday.

Seymour Benzer, an 84-year-old researcher at the California Institute of Technology, is widely credited for work that laid the foundation for neurological sciences. His work in the 1960s ran counter to the prevailing belief that human behavior was primarily shaped by environment.

In perhaps his most well-known work, Benzer and a student in the 1960s used fruit flies to study the impact genes have on sleep patterns. Normal fruit flies emerge at dawn each day but mutated genes caused certain fruit flies to become active at different times.

Benzer and his student corrected the sleep patterns of those fruit flies by injecting genes from normal fruit flies.

Benzer "paved the way for scientists to uncover links between genes and human behavior which have resulted in our improved ability to treat diseases of the brain and central nervous system," said James J. Barba, president and chief executive officer of Albany Medical Center.

Benzer also made discoveries that bridged the gap between DNA and the structure of the gene, which ultimately led to the Human Genome Project, an effort to map and sequence the three billion letters in the human genome.

His interest in neurogenetics followed the birth of his second daughter, who he said behaved radically different from his first child.

Benzer has received 40 major awards, including the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the National Medal of Science and the Peter Gruber Award for Neuroscience.

He grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Brooklyn College and received his master's and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Purdue University.

The Albany Medical Prize award was established in 2000 by a $50 million gift from the late Morris "Marty" Silverman, a New York City businessman who wanted to encourage health and biomedical research. Silverman died in January at age 93.

Past recipients of the prize include Stanley N. Cohen and Herbert W. Boyer, whose research discovering gene cloning paved the way for the modern biotechnology industry, and Anthony S. Fauci, who was recognized in 2002 for his seminal work on AIDS and other diseases of the immune system.

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