E.B. Wilson Lecture, 1998. Eukaryotic RNAs: once more from the beginning.

I am profoundly grateful to the American Society for Cell Biology for the award to me and my colleague Sheldon Penman of the E.B. Wilson Medal. This occasion presents the opportunity for reflections on a 40year search for indications of how RNA functions as an informational molecule in eukaryotic cells. As will be recounted, this quest began in the late 1950s, before the recognition of mRNA, by studying the biosynthesis of poliovirus, an RNA virus. The search continued through the molecular and biochemical definition of classes of nuclear and cytoplasmic RNA in both growing and virus-infected cultured mammalian cells and, subsequently, through studies on the basis of cellspecific mRNA expression in the liver. Finally, in the recent past our laboratory has concentrated on our original goal, the mechanism of recognition of extracellular signals with consequent gene regulation in the cell nucleus.