Avram Hershko

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Avram Hershko (Hebrew אברהם הרשקו) (born December 31, 1937) is an Israeli biologist.

Born Herskó Ferenc in Karcag, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, Hungary, he received his M.D. in 1965 and his Ph. D in 1969 from the Hadassah Faculty of Medicine of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in Medical Sciences at the Technion (Israel Institutite of Technology) in Haifa and Adjunct Professor of Pathology at New York University.

In 2000 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. Along with Aaron Ciechanover and Irwin Rose, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway has a critical role in maintaining the homeostasis of cells and is believed to be involved in the development and progression of diseases such as: cancer, muscular and neurological diseases, immune and inflammatory responses.

[edit] Honors and awards

1987 - Weizmann Prize for Sciences (Israel)
1993 - Elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization
1994 - Israel Prize in Biochemistry and Medicine
1999 - Wachter Prize, by the University of Innsbruck, Austria (with A. Ciechanover)
1999 - Gairdner International A ward, by the Gairdner Foundation, Canada (with A. Varshavsky)
2000 - Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
2004 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry

[edit] Publications

Hershko, A., Ciechanover, A., and Rose, I.A. (1979) "Resolution of the ATP-dependent proteolytic system from reticulocytes: A component that interacts with ATP". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 76, pp. 3107-3110.
Hershko, A., Ciechanover, A., Heller, H., Haas, A.L., and Rose I.A. (1980) "Proposed role of ATP in protein breakdown: Conjugation of proteins with multiple chains of the polypeptide of ATP-dependent proteolysis". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 77, pp. 1783-1786.
Ciechanover, A., Elias, S., Heller, H. and Hershko, A. (1982) Covalent affinity purification of ubiquitin-activating enzyme. J. Biol. Chem. 257, 2537-2542.
Hershko, A., Heller, H., Elias, S. and Ciechanover, A. (1983) Components of ubiquitin-protein ligase system: resolution, affinity purification and role in protein breakdown. J. Biol. Chem. 258, 8206-8214.
Hershko, A., Leshinsky, E., Ganoth, D. and Heller, H. (1984) ATP-dependent degradation of ubiquitin-protein conjugates. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 81, 1619-1623.
Hershko, A., Heller, H., Eytan, E. and Reiss, Y. (1986) The protein substrate binding site of the ubiquitin-protein ligase system. J. Biol. Chem. 261, 11992-11999.
Ganoth, D., Leshinsky, E., Eytan, E., and Hershko, A. (1988) A multicomponent system that degrades proteins conjugated to ubiquitin. Resolution of components and evidence for ATP-dependent complex formation. J. Biol. Chem. 263, 12412-1241.