Stanley "Stan" Falkow (January 24, 1934 – May 5, 2018) was an American microbiologist and a professor of microbiology at Georgetown University, University of Washington, and Stanford University School of Medicine. Falkow is known as the father of the field of molecular microbial pathogenesis. Falkow spent over 50 years uncovering molecular mechanisms of how bacteria cause disease and how to disarm them.

His mother came from a family of Jewish immigrants from Poland. She "rented several of their bedrooms and later opened a corset shop".

Because of poor grades until his senior year of high school, an adviser suggested military rather than college. While at Walter Reed, he worked with African-American microbiologist Othello Washington. Washington was older and more experienced than Falkow, but was assigned to be Stan's technician. Upon meeting, Falkow and Washington decided it would be more appropriate and better for both men to work together as a team. The two men worked together on isolating mobile genetic elements and the transfer of genes between E. coli and Salmonella and published a paper together about Proteus species. Falkow also worked with Shigella species and contracted dysentery, which lead to hospitalization, after being exposed to infected monkey feces flung at his face by an infected monkey.

In 1981, he was named chairman of the Department of Medical Microbiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, a position he held until 1985. While at Stanford, Falkow encouraged Esther Lederberg to continue directing the Stanford Plasmid Reference Center, an internationally used registry for plasmids, transposons and insertion sequences.)

Personal life and death

Falkow was married to Rhoda Ostroff in January, 1958 with whom he had two daughters. They divorced in 1983. In December, 1983, he married Lucy S. Tompkins. His death was announced and lifetime achievements highlighted in obituaries in The New York Times, Washington Post, Nature, Science, in a press release from the Americain Society of Microbiology and in various international news sources.

Contributions

Molecular microbiology research

Falkow has been referred to as the "father of molecular microbial pathogenesis", the study of how infectious microbes and host cells interact to cause disease at the molecular level.

Falkow adopted the perspective of viewing infection as a process that is ultimately dependent on both the infecting agent and the host.

Falkow and his first graduate student, Richard P. Silver, discovered that episomes (plasmids) are nicked into linear pieces of DNA and transported as linear DNA between two bacterial cells during conjugation. He then collaborated with Mexican scientists Emma Galindo and Jorge Olarte to investigate new forms of penicillin resistance in Shigella isolates from pediatric patients in Mexico City, which lead to the discovery of new forms of "R factors" - genes responsible for antimicrobial resistance.

Falkow was present at the famous Waikiki beach meeting in 1972 between Herb Boyer (who provided the restriction enzyme EcoRI) and Stanley Cohen (who provided the plasmid) that led to a plan to develop recombinant DNA technology. This led to the first cloning of a bacterial virulence factor, the heat stable toxin of E. coli, in a seminal 1976 paper with Magdalene Yh So, which heralded the application of molecular genetics to understanding gene transfer, and ultimately led to the creation of the field of synthetic biology.

Falkow and his trainees developed many methods that moved biological research forward such as: a method for screening patient samples for enteric pathogens, the identification of Salmonella and Shigella in patient samples based on lysine metabolism, the application of nucleic acid hybridization to distinguish different bacterial species, the application of agarose gels to isolate plasmids of various sizes, isolation and creation of different plasmid backbones now used as cloning vectors, a method for identifying unculturable pathogens based on isolated 16S ribosomal RNA sequence, an optimized version of GFP for flow cytometry applications, and a fluorescence-based method for the detection of genes expressed by pathogens inside of host cells, among many other techniques.

After studying the DNA content of many different pathogenic microbes, Falkow became one of the first scientists to suggest bacterial taxonomy should be based on DNA composition rather than phenotypic observations.

Falkow and others created the universal nomenclature scheme for plasmids still in use today. When Falkow became an emeritus Professor at Stanford University, he still taught students. Indeed, he co-taught with Lucy Tompkins a class open to undergraduate and graduate students on the history of Infectious Disease.

Falkow organized the first international symposium of invited speakers on antimicrobial resistance.

Falkow served on the first NIH Recombinant DNA committee to recommend policy guidelines for the use of recombinant DNA to the United States of America Congress.

Falkow worked with the FDA of the United States throughout his career to advocate for the decrease of antimicrobial agents used in livestock feed.

Awards and honors

Falkow was elected President of the American Society for Microbiology from July 1997 through June 1998. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1997 and received the Maxwell Finland Award from the National Foundation of Infectious Diseases in 1999. He also received in 1999 an Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, and the University of Maine Alumni Career Award. He has received honorary doctorates in Europe and the US. He received numerous awards for his achievements in science, including the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Infectious Disease Research, the Altemeier Medal from the Surgical Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award Lecture at the University of Chicago, and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. In 2003, he received the Abbott Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Microbiology and the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the National Academy of Sciences.

He received the Robert Koch Award in 2000.

Falkow was an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also elected into the UK's Royal Society as a Foreign Member.

In September 2008, Falkow was awarded the Lasker Award for medical research.

In May, 2016, Falkow was awarded by Barack Obama the National Medal of Science for his monumental contributions toward understanding how microbes cause disease and resist the effects of antibiotics, and for his inspiring mentorship that created the field of molecular microbial pathogenesis.

Trainees

Stanley Falkow is known for training many experts in the field of molecular microbiology who then became prominent professors and scientists all over the world, including;

  • Manuel Amieva - Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Disease), Stanford University School of Medicine
  • Igor Brodsky - Professor of Pathobiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine
  • Carleen Collins - Professor of Microbiology, University of Washington
  • Gordon Dougan - Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge
  • Brett Finlay - Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, University of British Columbia
  • Karen Guillemin - Professor of Biology, University of Oregon
  • Carlton Gyles (sabbatical) - Professor of Microbiology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • Ralph Isberg - Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University School of Medicine
  • Leonard Mayer - Senior Scientific Advisor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Denise Monack - Professor of Global Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  • Daniel Portnoy - Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology & Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California at Berkeley
  • Lalita Ramakrishnan - Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge
  • David Relman