ROSE, IRWIN

ROSE, IRWIN (Ernie) (1926– ), U.S. biologist and Nobel laureate in chemistry. Born in New York, Rose grew up in Spokane, Washington, where he attended Washington State College before serving as a radio technician in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He graduated with a B.S. (1949) from the University of Chicago, where he also gained his Ph.D. after working on nucleic acid synthesis with Birgit Vennesland (1952). After fellowships at Western Reserve (now Case-Western Reserve) University and New York University, he became a member of the biochemistry faculty at Yale University (1954–63) before joining the division of basic science at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia (1963–95). Since 1997, he has been a researcher in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry (2004) jointly with avram hershko and aaron ciechanover for his contributions to characterizing the ubiquitins, the series of enzymes which govern the breakdown of cellular proteins. This research has major implications for understanding cell growth and proliferation in health and disease and for developing novel anticancer drugs. Rose's current research concerns the role of proton transfer in enzyme recycling, especially in carbohydrate synthesis. Rose was elected to the U.S. Academy of Sciences (1979). He is married to the research biochemist Zelda Budenstein Rose. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)