Rosbash, Michael Morris, 1944–, American geneticist, b. Kansas City, Mo., Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1970. Rosbash has been a professor at Brandeis Univ. since 1974, and he is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Rosbash was the joint recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Michael Young and Jeffrey Hall for their discoveries concerning mechanisms that control the circadian rhythm on the molecular level. In 1984 Hall and Rosbash, and Young working separately, isolated a gene that controls the circadian rhythm (see rhythm, biological) in fruit flies. Hall and Rosbash also showed (1990) that the protein produced by the gene's messenger RNA accumulated at night and was degraded during daytime, suggesting that the accumulating protein suppressed the gene's production of messenger RNA. It was not known, however, how the protein entered the cell nucleus, where it could have that effect; that mechanism was later discovered by Young. All three scientists also determined other aspects of the genetics and molecular mechanisms driving the circadian rhythm.
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