Carl R. Woese
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
July 15, 1928 - December 30, 2012
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Scientific Discipline: Environmental Sciences and Ecology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1988)
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Carl Woese was a microbiologist who revolutionized the field of phylogenic taxonomy. The tree of life originally included two domains, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, until Woese disproved this hypothesis through the use of ribosomal RNA (rRNA). He sequenced and compared the 16S rRNA (a component of the small subunit of a prokaryotic ribosome) of bacteria and elucidated that Archaea had evolved separately from the universal ancestor of all life, simultaneously setting the standard for determining evolutionary relatedness among organisms. These studies allowed him to propose the idea that RNA was the precursor to life on Earth because of its catalytic tendencies, stability, and ability to store genetic information.
