Contributors

摘要

As a middle school student in Moscow, Russia, Eugene Koonin read the work of pioneering scientists such as Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling, who together in 1962 founded the field of molecular evolution through a prescient analysis of just a few snippets of protein sequences. "I had the good fortune to read these papers quite early," he says. "I just thought that this was the right way to study life, although at the time ... the available data were completely inadequate." Koonin completed a PhD at Moscow State University, where he investigated the replication mechanisms of RNA viruses. "This introduced me to the world of viruses and other mobile genetic elements that remains incredibly fascinating to this day," he says. While working at the Institutes of Poliomyelitis and Microbiology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, Koonin began to apply computational tools to unravel microbial evolution. Now a senior investigator at the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, Koonin uses comparative genomics to elucidate evolutionary trends, with a focus on the role of horizontal gene transfer and parasite-host arms races.