Craig S. Semon Telegram & Gazette Staff @CraigSemon

WednesdayApr29,2020at11:10AMApr29,2020at6:49PM

WORCESTER UMass Medical School cell biologist Thoru Pederson has been elected to this year's class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

It is a great honor to be recognized by one's guild in my case the profession of cell biology, Pederson said. But that this venerable institution is one of both the arts and the sciences adds so much to my sense of profound privilege in having been elected.

Pederson is the Vitold Arnett professor of cell biology, associate vice chancellor for research and professor of biochemistryand molecular pharmacology at UMass.

A longtime scientist at the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Sciences, Pederson served as the foundations president from 1985 until its merger withUMass in 1997.

Pedersons election to the academy recognizes his career of research on the functional organization of the cell nucleus, including specific associations between RNAs and proteins to form machines that underlie gene readout. He has also made transformative discoveries about the nucleolus.

Most recently Pederson and collaborators have designed CRISPR-based methods to probe the fine-scale movements of specific genomic loci.

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UMass Medical School cell biologist Thoru Pederson elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences - Worcester Telegram