biology

Phillip Allen Sharp

Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp rather than just read about it. In short: Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence". He was awarded the 2015 Othmer Gold Medal. Sharp's current research focuses on small RNAs and other types of non-coding RNAs. His laboratory works to identify the target mRNAs of microRNAs (miRNAs), and has discovered a class of miRNAs that are produced from sequences adjacent to transcription start sites. His laboratory also studies how miRNA gene regulation functions in angiogenesis and cellular stress.

Biography Sharp was born in Falmouth, Kentucky, the son of Kathrin (Colvin) and Joseph Walter Sharp. He married Ann Holcombe in 1964, and they have three daughters. Sharp studied at Union Commonwealth University, and majored in chemistry and mathematics, afterwards completing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1969. Following his Ph.D., he did his postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology until 1971, where he studied plasmids. Later, he studied gene expression in human cells at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a senior scientist under James D. Watson. In 1974, he was offered a position at MIT by biologist Salvador Luria. He was director of MIT's Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research) from 1985 to 1991; head of the Biology department from 1991 to 1999; and founder and director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research from 2000 to 2004. In 1995, the FBI confirmed that Sharp received a letter from Ted Kaczynski, insinuating that Sharp would become a target of the Unabomber because of his work in genetics, stating that "it would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics." He is currently MIT Institute Professor and Professor of Biology Emeritus and member of the Koch Institute, and was an Institute Professor, MIT's highest faculty rank, since 1999. He is also the chair of the advisory board of the MIT Jameel Clinic. Sharp co-founded Biogen, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, and Magen Biosciences, and has served on the boards of all three companies.

Awards and honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Sharp has won several notable awards, including the 2004 National Medal of Science, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the American Philosophical Society, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1981, and the 1988 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Thomas R. Cech. Sharp is an elected member of several academic societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2011. In 2012, he was elected the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a Member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Fidelity Biosciences Group; a member of the Board of Advisors of Polaris Venture Partners; chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and member of the Board of Directors of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals; advisor and investor at Longwood and Polaris Venture Funds; a member of the Boards of Directors at Syros Pharmaceuticals and VIR Biotechnology; and member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Dewpoint Biotechnology. He is the subject of the 2025 documentary film Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution, directed by Bill Haney. Pendleton County, Kentucky, Sharp's birthplace, named its current middle school after him.

Other activities In October 2010, Sharp participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students got to engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch. Sharp is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2011, he was listed at #5 on the MIT150 list of the top 150 innovators and ideas from MIT. He is an editorial advisor to Xconomy, and is a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He has also served on the Faculty Advisory Board of the MIT-Harvard Research Journal and MIT Student Research Association. In 2016, Sharp helped organize the Laureates Letter Supporting Precision Agriculture, written to oppose efforts by Greenpeace to ban GMOs and golden rice in particular.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Phillip Allen Sharp

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp

In research: Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp 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: Phillip Allen Sharp is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1944 births, American Nobel laureates, American fellows of the Royal Society, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Phillip Allen Sharp in simple terms?

Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J.

Why does Phillip Allen Sharp 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 Phillip Allen Sharp?

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 Phillip Allen Sharp.