Orange County Register

Geneticist Doug Wallace. Image by Paul Rodriguez, The Register

UC Irvine geneticist Doug Wallace, one of the world’s leading authorities on mitochondria, the so-called “power plant” of cells, has been elected a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the elite health branch of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wallace, 62, becomes only the second person on the current UCI faculty who is a member of three of the most renowned societies in U.S. science — the IOM, the NAS and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The other professor is F. Sherwood Rowland, winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

UCI spent more than three years recruiting Wallace from Emory University, where he built a reputation not only for his insights into the basic nature of mitochondria but how these so-called “organelles” might be involved in disease, especially diabetes and cancer.

“I am honored and grateful that the work of our UCI team on mitochondrial diseases has been recognized by the Institute of Medicine,” Wallace said by email.  “The mitochondria provide the energy for our cells and systemic energy defects cause symptoms in those organs in our body which require the most energy:  the brain, heart, muscle, kidney, pancreas, etc.  These are the same organs  that are affected by degenerative and metabolic diseases, cancer and aging.  Therefore, the concepts developed by our Center on mitochondrial medicine promise to revolutionize our understanding of the causes of common diseases and to prove new approaches for their treatment.”

Follow Sciencedude on Twitter @grobbins, become a fan on Facebook, and watch his videos on theocsciencedude channelof YouTube.

Earlier on Sciencedude:

Earlier of College Life:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.