David C. Page, director of the Whitehead Institute and professor of biology at MIT, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine.
He is among 65 new members of the Washington, D.C.-based institute, raising its total active membership to 1,736.
The Institute of Medicine is one of the four national academies, along with the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. It serves as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on human health issues.
Page has conducted fundamental studies of mammalian sex chromosomes and their roles in germ cell development, with special attention to the function, structure and evolution of the Y chromosome. His laboratory recently completed the sequencing of the human Y chromosome in conjunction with the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center. Page's laboratory first reported DNA-based deletion maps of the Y chromosome in 1986, comprehensive clone-based physical maps of the chromosome in 1992 and systematic catalogs of Y-linked genes in 1997.
Page is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 22, 2008 (download PDF).
