Paul L. Modrich


Paul Lawrence Modrich is an American biochemist, James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is known for his research on DNA mismatch repair. Modrich received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015, jointly with Aziz Sancar and Tomas Lindahl.

Early life and education

Modrich was born on June 13, 1946, in Raton, New Mexico to Laurence Modrich and Margaret McTurk. He has a younger brother Dave. His father was a biology teacher and coach for basketball, football and tennis at Raton High School where he graduated in 1964. Modrich is of German, Scotch-Irish, Croatian and Montenegrin descent. His paternal grandfather, of Croatian descent, is probably from little village Modrići near Zadar, and grandmother of Montenegrin descent, immigrated to the United States from coastal Croatia in the late 19th century. His maternal family is of mixed German and Scotch-Irish descent. Modrich married fellow scientist Vickers Burdett in 1980.
Modrich obtained a B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 and subsequently a Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 1973.

Research

Modrich became an assistant professor at the chemistry department of University of California, Berkeley in 1974. He joined Duke University's faculty in 1976 and has been a Howard Hughes Investigator since 1995. He works primarily on strand-directed mismatch repair. His lab demonstrated how DNA mismatch repair serves as a copyeditor to prevent errors from DNA polymerase. Matthew Meselson previously proposed the existence of recognition of mismatches. Modrich performed biochemical experiments to study mismatch repair in E. coli. They later searched for proteins associated with mismatch repair in humans.

Honors and awards

Honors and awards received by Modrich include:
Modrich is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.