Rosbash worked extensively with the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and contributed to the discovery of the genes and molecular mechanisms involved in the regulation of biological rhythms. The work had far-reaching implications, particularly for understanding the influence of genetic signals on the daily physiological processes of humans. For his discoveries, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Jeffrey C. Hall and Michael W. Young).
Rosbash He grew up in Boston, where his mother worked in cytology and his father was a singer. He studied chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where he earned a BA in 1965, and biophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with a Ph.D. in 1971. He joined the faculty of Brandeis University in Waltham , Massachusetts, as an assistant professor in 1974.
In the 1970s, he became interested in the influence of genetics on behavior and began a productive collaboration with Hall, a friend and colleague of Brandeis. Rosbash and Hall were interested in the call period gene, a gene that had been discovered a decade earlier and that played a role in regulating the circadian rhythm in Drosophila, but had not yet been isolated from the fruit fly genome. In 1984, around the same time as Young, who was working independently at New York’s Rockefeller University, Rosbash and Hall successfully isolated and sequenced the period gene.
In the 1990s, Rosbash and Hall shed light on the mechanistic role of the period gene, showing that levels of the protein product, PER, oscillated during the circadian cycle, accumulating in cell nuclei at night and degrading during the day. Their findings led them to propose a model whereby PER was self-regulating, inhibiting its own transcription (synthesis of RNA from DNA) when its protein levels reached a critical point.
Rosbash and Hall later discovered additional genes involved in regulating the circadian rhythm. Their later work, along with that of Young and other researchers in the field, helped confirm the idea that a self-regulating clock mechanism regulates the circadian rhythm. It was later discovered that a significant number of human genes were regulated by a mechanism homologous to that described in Drosophila, leading to new insights into human physiology.
Rosbash received numerous honors throughout his career, including the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience (2009), the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in Biology or Biochemistry (2011), and the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2013), all shared with Hall and Young. He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997) and the National Academy of Sciences (2003).