Researcher

Phillip Sharp

Profile

Phillip Sharp is an American molecular biologist at MIT who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Richard Roberts for the discovery of RNA splicing—the process by which intervening sequences (introns) are removed from pre-messenger RNA to produce functional mRNA. Sharp's laboratory used electron microscopy to visualize the hybrid molecules formed when adenoviral mRNA hybridized with its genomic DNA template, revealing that the mRNA corresponded to non-contiguous regions of the DNA. This demonstrated that eukaryotic genes are discontinuous, fundamentally changing our understanding of gene structure and expression. RNA splicing is now understood to be a regulatory mechanism of enormous importance: alternative splicing allows a single gene to encode multiple protein isoforms, and aberrant splicing drives many diseases including cancer and spinal muscular atrophy. Sharp co-founded Biogen (now Biogen Inc.) and has been a prominent advocate for biotechnology and translational research. The therapeutic targeting of splicing—using antisense oligonucleotides to correct aberrant splicing in diseases like SMA (nusinersen/Spinraza)—draws directly on the foundational biology Sharp established.

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