Renato Dulbecco Dies

Renato Dulbecco, the genome sequencing proponent who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine "for his role in drawing a link between genetic mutations and cancer," has died, reports The New York Times. He was 97. A founding fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., Dulbecco's prize-winning work "showed that certain viruses could insert their own genes into infected cells and trigger uncontrolled cell growth, a hallmark of cancer," the Times says, adding that this discovery "provided the first solid evidence that cancer was caused by genetic mutations." In 1986, Dulbecco "proposed cataloging all human genes to gain deeper insights into cancer," the Times reports, thus "providing the intellectual impetus for the Human Genome Project."