A pair of scientists whose discoveries have changed genomic research was honored today by the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Eric Phizicky, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Grayhack, Ph.D., received the 2004 Davey Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to cancer research.
Phizicky and Grahack, a husband-and-wife research team, are considered pioneers in the field of functional proteomics. They were the first to develop a method to identify genes by the activity of their products on a genome-wide scale, by using all of the 6,144 genes of yeast as a model system. Their work has broad implications for biological sciences including cancer research.