Dulbecco, Renato, << duhl BEHK oh, rih NAHT oh >> (1914-2012), an Italian-born American virologist, shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with David Baltimore and Howard Temin of the United States (see Baltimore, David ; Temin, Howard Martin ). Dulbecco received the award for demonstrating how viruses can transform normal cells into cancerous ones. Dulbecco’s discovery was that some viruses can build parts of their genetic material into the structure of the infected cells. These cells then passed on their transformed structure by heredity. See Virus .
In the 1950’s, Dulbecco started growing the first cultures of animal viruses. He studied these cultures and observed the transformations that took place within the animal cells to find out how the viruses manipulated the cells they infected. In experiments with mice, he found that a particular virus called the polyoma virus inserts its deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) into the DNA of the host cell. The cell then becomes a cancer cell and copies the virus’s DNA with its own when reproducing, forming a tumor. Dulbecco concluded that human cancers could be formed in a similar way.
Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro, Italy. He received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Turin. In 1947, he moved to the United States and studied viruses at Indiana University and the California Institute of Technology. He became a U.S. citizen in 1953. In 1963, he became a senior fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. From 1977 to 1981, he was professor at the University of California Medical School. From 1989 to 1992, he was president of the Salk Institute and, in 1993, he became president emeritus. He died on Feb. 19, 2012.
