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Authority on Influenza Virus is Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

One of the highest honors for faculty is election to prestigious national academies and societies such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).

Election to the AAAS is one of the most coveted honors. It was achieved by Robert A. Lamb, John Evans Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, who was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

Lamb, who also is professor of microbiology and immunology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, is an internationally recognized authority on the influenza virus. He is investigating the molecular structure and the mechanism of replication of viruses because of their importance as disease-causing agents and to better understand how a virus is formed and the processes by which these viruses enter cells and assemble at the plasma membrane. Knowledge of virus structure will aid scientists in developing new vaccines.

In 1999, Lamb and Theodore Jardetzky, biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology, determined the three-dimensional structure of a key protein molecule found in viruses, whose form suggests that viruses from different families, including measles, mumps, HIV and influenza, enter cells by a remarkably similar mechanism.

In 2006, Lamb and Jardetzky determined the three-dimensional structure of two forms of the same key protein molecule found in viruses like measles and mumps that is needed for entry of the virus into cells. This protein undergoes a metamorphosis and acts as a machine to enable the viruses to invade a cell.

Lamb, who joined the Northwestern faculty in 1983, has served as a Howard Hughes Investigator since 1991. The institute's nationwide group of 350 biomedical researchers spends at least three-fourths of their time in research, working on their own choice of scientific investigation. Under the agreement, Lamb and several members of his research team continue as full-time employees of the institute, while retaining their affiliation with Northwestern.

Lamb was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. His other honors include consecutive National Institutes of Health MERIT awards and a five-year Bristol-Myers Squibb Infectious Diseases Unrestricted Research Grant.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and editor-in-chief of the journal Virology. Lamb, who served as president of the American Society for Virology, is a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, American Society for Cell Biology and Society for General Microbiology.