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H. Robert Horvitz is using genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry,
electrophyisology, laser microsurgery and pharmacology to study how genes
control the development of the nervous system and how the nervous system
controls behavior. His major focus is on the nematode Caenorhabditis
elegans, which has 302 neurons and a neural connectivity that has
been completely defined from serial section electron micrographs. Dr.
Horvitz has elucidated a molecular genetic pathway for programmed cell
death (apoptosis), which is fundamental to nervous system development
in all animals. He has also studied neural cell lineage, cell fate determination,
cell migration as well as axonal outgrowth. Dr. Horvitz has analyzed a
variety of C. elegans behaviors, including locomotion, feeding,
defecation, and egg laying, and has studied how the animal responds to
gustatory, olfactory and mechanical stimuli. One current focus is on how
experience modulates C. elegans behavior. This effort revealed
the involvement of the serotonergic nervous system and led to the identification
of a novel class of ionotropic serotonin receptor, which acts a chloride
channel. These studies also demonstrated that only some of the animal’s
responses to fluoxetine (Prozac) are mediated by the protein thought to
be the sole fluoxetine target, the serotonin reuptake transporter SERT.
Dr. Horvitz was involved in a multilaboratory collaboration that discovered
the identity of a human gene responsible for the inherited form of amyotropic
lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and he continues an interest
in this problem.
Horvitz joined the MIT Department of Biology faculty in 1978, and was named David Koch Professor of Biology in 2000. He is also Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and was appointed Investigator at the McGovern Institute in 2001. He received his Ph.D. in 1974 from Harvard University. Horvitz is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience. Horvitz received the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering and characterizing the genes controlling cell death in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. He received MIT's James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award for 2005-2006.
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