Hall, Jeffrey Connor, 1945–, American geneticist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, 1971. Hall was a professor at Brandeis Univ. from 1974 to 2008; he also taught (2004–12) at the Univ. of Maine. Hall was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Michael Young and Michael Rosbash in 2017 for their discoveries of mechanisms that control the circadian rhythm on the molecular level. In 1984 Hall and Rosbash, and Young working separately, isolated a gene that controls the circadian rhythm (see rhythm, biological) in fruit flies. Hall and Rosbash also showed (1990) that the protein produced by the gene's messenger RNA accumulated at night and was degraded during daytime, suggesting that the accumulating protein suppressed the gene's production of messenger RNA. It was not known, however, how the protein entered the cell nucleus, where it could have that effect; that mechanism was later discovered by Young. All three scientists also determined other aspects of the genetics and molecular mechanisms driving the circadian rhythm.
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