The US-American National Academy of Sciences has elected Patrick Cramer as Foreign Associate. The prestigious academy thus honors the biochemist for his outstanding research on a fundamental process of life – how cells read the information encoded in the genes and how this is regulated.
“To have been elected into the American Academy is a great honor and I was very pleased, also because I feel very close to my colleagues in the United States since we lived as a family in California 20 years ago,” said the Max Planck Director, who is delighted about the honor.
Living cells make copies of their genes that serve as building blocks for proteins. This copying process is called transcription and is controlled by molecular machines called polymerases. Cramer and his team are investigating how these polymerases are constructed and regulated in cells.
