Conversations in genetics. Vol. 1, No. 2: Talking with Francois Jacob.

Recorded on January 17, 2003, at the Museum of the Institut Pasteur, Paris, Lucy Shapiro, Director of the Beckman Centre and Ludwig Professor of Developmental Biology, Stanford University talks to Francois Jacob, Professor Emeritus, Institut Pasteur and College de France. Jacob is acclaimed for his visionary studies on gene regulation in bacteria and bacteriophages. His experiments with Andre Lwoff and Jacques Monod led to the concept of phage immunity, messenger RNA, and the discovery of regulatory mechanisms that govern the readout of information in the genome, for which the three scientists received the Nobel Prize in 1965. With Elie Wollman he proposed the episome hypothesis and the idea of ordered transfer of a circular bacterial chromosome, and with Sydney Brenner, the replicon model, significantly advancing understanding of bacterial conjugation and DNA replication. These fundamental insights form the bedrock of modern molecular genetics. In addition to his extraordinary scientific achievements, Jacob has received worldwide recognition for his highly successful literary career.