Rutgers geneticist wins prestigious award for DNA work begun in 1941

Witkin's insights into how bacteria cells manage to recognize and overcome damaged sections of DNA paved the way for research on genetic therapies for humans.

A 94-year-old retired Rutgers University geneticist is one of the winners of the 2015 Lasker Award for her pioneering research on how DNA manages to repair itself.

Evelyn M. Witkin, of Princeton, shares the Albert B. Lasker Medical Research Award with a Boston geneticist who took her pioneering work on bacteria and applied it to humans.

The Lasker Award is often a forerunner of the Nobel Prize; 44 recipients in the last three decades have gone on to be awarded a Nobel.

Witkin worked with bacteria to discover the "SOS response" cells devise to recognize and overcome damage to their genetic coding. She discovered that more than 40 previously dormant genes swing into action to create an emergency copier that can bypass the damaged portion of the DNA strand.

Without that back-up copier, the DNA would be like a faulty zipper that got stuck on a single broken section, she said. "That's lethal," she said. "The cell would die if it couldn't replicate."

Witkin was born in New York City, and came to Rutgers after earning her doctorate at Columbia University. She began her research in 1941 - at the age of 20 - before science even knew genes were made of DNA. She continued that research for another 50 years, moving to Douglass Collage at Rutgers University in 1971. She retired in 1991, after eight years on the faculty of the Waksman Institute. 

In 2002, President George W. Bush awarded her a National Medal of Science.

In all that time, she never became bored with the focus of her research, or doubted its worth. 

"I found that what I was doing was so compelling and interesting it never occurred to me I could do something else," she said. "I realize it was a long time to stay in one area, but it was continuously fulfilling, and it kept me happy, so I stayed with it."

When asked if she had encountered obstacles because of her gender, she said that on the contrary, she was lucky to have clear-thinking bosses who allowed her to devise a schedule that would accommodate becoming a mother.

She was given a generous maternity leave when she was pregnant with her first child in 1949. Having asked for a bit of time off, her boss simply asked what kind of arrangement she needed to make the job work for her.

"I was astounded by his attitude," she said, noting such profound understanding remains rare even now for women in the workplace.

She ended up working part-time until her younger son graduated from high school. She was able to do that because she had research grants that paid her salary, and because she had a full-time assistant, she said. Witkins would set up the experiments, analyze the data, and write up the results; the assistant would attend to the day-to-day monitoring of the bacteria.

The Lasker winners were told of their awards back in June, but sworn to secrecy until today's announcement. She and her fellow award-winner, Stephen J. Elledge, 59, from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, will share a $250,000 honorarium.