Jack Griffith has been contributing to research at Carolina for 46 years.
Jack Griffith is a faculty member at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and a professor in the departments of Microbiology and Immunology and Biophysics and Biochemistry within the UNC School of Medicine.
What brought you to Carolina?
It was time for me to move into a tenure-track position. I had a role at Stanford’s biochemistry department as a non-tenure-track research fellow and had been a postdoctoral fellow with the Nobel Laurate Arthur Kornberg. In 1978, I visited Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, UCLA, and UNC-Chapel Hill looking for a new opportunity.
What struck me about Carolina was not only the lovely and very livable environment but the cadre of young faculty members who were building a center for molecular biology. I knew three of them — Clyde Hutchinson, Marshall Edgell, and John Newbold — from when I was a graduate student at Caltech. There was also a close friend of mine from Stanford, Paul Modrich, who was a new faculty member at Duke. This, combined with Joe Pagano’s enthusiasm for the new UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center he was establishing, was enough to draw me to Chapel Hill.
How has your role here changed over the years?
My role has changed remarkably little. For decades, I have been in the same lab putting my expertise to use in preparing DNA and its complexes with protein for visualization using the electron microscope. Any time the work required the very best resolution, I was the person for the job. I enjoy this, and training students and fellows in the art.
With our recent move into the world of proteins expressed by telomeres — the DNA found on the tips of chromosomes — the special expertise involving light microscopy now belongs to my postdoctoral researcher Taghreed AlTurki. My newest role has been to help develop this work and clear the path for her future advancements.
What’s kept you at Carolina?
I have had opportunities to move elsewhere, but each time I considered the fact that UNC-Chapel Hill and the Research Triangle Park was growing better and better in my area of science and recalled how many of my colleagues at other institutions wanted to move here. That and the highly collaborative atmosphere at Carolina has kept me happily here.
The fact that I live within a 12-minute drive from home and have a 13-acre horse farmette, separate music building, and six-car garage for my collection is something that could not be duplicated in any other place in the U.S. with such a high density of research institutions and companies.
What contribution are you most proud of?
All organisms whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus — from plants to yeast to humans — bundle their genome into chromosomes. The DNA in each chromosome is extremely long and linear and the two DNA ends are located at the tips of the chromosome, which are called telomeres.
Twenty-five years ago, our lab showed that this DNA at the very end of the chromosome is arranged into a large loop or lasso-like structure, which is critical to telomere function. We solved a six-decades-old question: How do telomeres block chromosomes from joining end-to-end? More recently, our 2023 paper disproved the assumption that the DNA comprising the telomere is silent and does not encode any proteins. We showed that telomeres can produce two small, unusual proteins.
These two discoveries have made a significant impact on telomere research and basic cancer biology.
What is a uniquely Carolina experience you’ve had?
One Saturday morning, I was driving my black 1956 XK140 Jaguar convertible down a country road to Pittsboro. I was wearing wrap-around dark sunglasses and a large black cowboy hat. I tend not to push the speed limit, and a pickup truck drove up close behind me. But as much as I tried to give him room to pass, he hung back, as if following me. I turned into a gas station near Highway 64 to get gas, and the pickup followed me in. An older man jumped out, ran over, and stated loudly “Let me shake your hand!” He then stepped back and muttered, “You are not Richard Petty.”
I apologized and he mumbled, “Nice car anyhow.”
Rooted recognizes long-standing members of the UNC-Chapel Hill community who have aided in the advancement of research by staying at Carolina. They are crucial to the UNC Research enterprise, experts in their fields, and loyal Tar Heels. Know someone we should feature? Nominate a researcher.