biology

Tim Tully

Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully rather than just read about it. In short: Timothy Paul Tully (born 1954) is an American neurobiologist who is the chief scientific officer and executive vice president for research & development at the San Diego–based biotechnology company Dart Neuroscience. He is known for his research on the role of genetics in human memory.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Timothy Paul Tully (born 1954) is an American neurobiologist who is the chief scientific officer and executive vice president for research & development at the San Diego–based biotechnology company Dart Neuroscience. He is known for his research on the role of genetics in human memory. With the support of billionaire Ken Dart, he is also attempting to create a pharmaceutical drug that would give its takers a photographic memory, which has been dubbed "Viagra for the brain" by the media.

Education and career Born in Washington, Illinois, Tully attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, from which he received his B.S. in 1976 and his Ph.D. in 1981. At the University of Illinois, he studied under Jerry Hirsch, and helped to prepare Hirsch for his debates on race and intelligence with William Shockley. He then did postdoctoral research at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the faculty of Brandeis University as an assistant professor in 1987. He began working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in 1991 as an associate professor, where he was subsequently named Professor in 1995 and Head of the Division of Neurogenetics in 2006. In 1997, he and James Watson founded Helicon Therapeutics, Inc., with the aim of creating a pharmaceutical drug to enhance human memory. Tully served as its acting Chief Science Officer until it merged with Dart Neuroscience in 2012. In 2007, he resigned his position at CSHL to become Chief Science Officer at Dart Neuroscience.

Research Tully is known for his research identifying genes that affect memory in the fruit fly species Drosophila melanogaster. In 1995, Tully and his CSHL colleague Jerry Yin made headlines when they genetically engineered a Drosophila fly that displayed the equivalent of a photographic memory. They did so by breeding flies with a mutated form of the CREB gene to produce many more activator proteins than it normally would, thereby allowing the flies to store more long-term memories. Through his company Helicon, Tully subsequently began working to develop a drug to raise levels of the CREB protein, in the hope that it would improve memory in humans. In 2004, Tully and his CSHL colleagues developed HT-0712, a drug that aims to improve memory in people with dementia. At the time, Tully suggested that it could also be used by healthy people to help them remember how to play a new musical instrument or speak a new language.

References

External links Tim Tully publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tim Tully

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully

In research: Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully 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: Tim Tully is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, American geneticists, American neuroscientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Tim Tully in simple terms?

Why does Tim Tully 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 Tim Tully?

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 Tim Tully.