biology

James F. Gusella

James F. Gusella is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand James F. Gusella rather than just read about it. In short: James Francis Gusella (born 1952 in Ottawa) is a Canadian molecular biologist and geneticist known for his work on Huntington's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in humans. He is the Bullard Professor of Neurogenetics in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and an investigator at the Center for Genomic Medicine at the Mass General Research Institute.

Key takeaways

James F. Gusella belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect James F. Gusella to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of James F. Gusella from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

James Francis Gusella (born 1952 in Ottawa) is a Canadian molecular biologist and geneticist known for his work on Huntington's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in humans. He is the Bullard Professor of Neurogenetics in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and an investigator at the Center for Genomic Medicine at the Mass General Research Institute.

Early life and education Gusella was born in Ottawa, Canada. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Ottawa in 1974, and his Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. As a doctoral student of David Housman, Gusella developed linkage analysis techniques using restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) to identify human disease genes.

Career Gusella joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 1980, where he began collaborating with Nancy Wexler to study the genetic basis of Huntington's disease. Through linkage analysis of a large Venezuelan population of Huntington's disease kindreds, they mapped the location of the causal gene to the short arm of chromosome 4 in 1983. This achievement marked the first time that a human disease gene had been localized to a specific chromosome using anonymous DNA markers. Building on this success, the team cloned the huntingtin gene in 1993 and established the CAG trinucleotide repeat expansion as the underlying genetic etiology of Huntington's disease. Gusella's lab employed similar strategies to identify genes responsible for neurofibromatosis type 2 and a familial form of Alzheimer's disease. In 1999, along with Cynthia Morton, he co-founded the Developmental Genome Anatomy Project (DGAP), harnessing de novo balanced chromosomal rearrangements to identify genes associated with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Gusella was a founding director of the Center for Human Genetic Research (now known as the Center for Genomic Medicine) at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2003. Gusella and David Housman were among the founders of Integrated Genetics (now part of Genzyme), who introduced the first diagnostic test for Huntington's disease in 1986.

Awards and honors In 1997, Gusella was awarded the King Faisal Prize in Medicine together with Konrad Beyreuther and Colin L. Masters for contributions to the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases. He has also received the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease (1987), the Taylor Prize (1994), the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Health and Education (1998), the Neuronal Plasticity Prize (2004). He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and he received the William Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics in 2016.

References

External links

James F. Gusella at Massachusetts General Hospital James F. Gusella at Harvard Medical School

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with James F. Gusella

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what James F. Gusella claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to James F. Gusella before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about James F. Gusella ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of James F. Gusella

In research: James F. Gusella appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses James F. Gusella in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: James F. Gusella is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 births, 20th-century Canadian biologists, Alzheimer's disease researchers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for James F. Gusella outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study James F. Gusella in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what James F. Gusella means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain James F. Gusella out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is James F. Gusella in simple terms?

Why does James F. Gusella matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study James F. Gusella?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on James F. Gusella.