ThomasR. Cech, Ph.D. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 8, 1947, Tom Cech was raised and educated in Iowa (B.A. in chemistry from Grinnell College, 1970).
In 1982 Tom Cech and his research group announced that an RNA molecule from Tetrahymena, a single-celled pond organism, cut and rejoined chemical bonds in the complete absence of proteins.
Tom Cech and his group are working to understand the structure and function of catalytic RNA molecules and the activity and regulation of telomerase.
In those studies, Cech and his colleagues showed that RNA is more than a biological middleman, capable only of shepherding hereditary information from one molecule to another.
In announcing his finding that year, Cech, who became an HHMI investigator in 1988, demonstrated that RNA possessed catalytic powers previously attributed only to protein enzymes, which shear and splice chemical bonds in the elegant molecular interplay essential for the function of every cell.
Cech and his research group made their discovery with an RNA molecule from a unicellular pond microbe known as Tetrahymena.
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