Ronald Breaker


Ronald R. Breaker is an American biochemist who has been a Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University since 1995. He is best known for the discovery of riboswitches, a common RNA regulatory element. His current research is focused on understanding advanced functions of nucleic acids, including the discovery and analysis of riboswitches and ribozymes.

Research

Ronald earned his B.S. in biology and chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue University with Peter T Gilham. He was a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute with Gerald Joyce. While at Scripps, he isolated the first DNA enzyme. He joined the molecular, cellular, and developmental biology department at Yale University. His research group worked on in vitro engineered riboswitches, RNA biosensors, and began to look for riboswitches in nature and identified the Cobalamin riboswitch. Over the next decade, the group would perform pivotal work establishing the role of ligand-binding RNAs and resulted in the discovery of multiple classes of riboswitches.
He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2005. Breaker is a member of the JASON defense advisory group, and was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2013.

Awards