Anna Marie Skalka, 2003-03-01

Item — Box: AV03, miniDV: CSHL1153

Staff Only

Oral History | Anna Marie Skalka

Scope and Contents

Anna Marie Skalka, microbiologist, molecular biologist and geneticist, is interviewed by Mila Pollock on March 1, 2003 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.

Scene 1. 2003 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting: The biology of DNA -- Scene 2. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: first visit -- Scene 3. Coming to work at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 4. Alfred Hershey -- Scene 5. Working with Alfred Hershey -- Scene 6. Alfred Hershey, mentor -- Scene 7. Alfred Hershey's research group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 8. Personal contact with Alfred Hershey -- Scene 9. Jim Watson, Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Dates

Creation: 2003-03-01

Creator

Skalka, Anna M. (Interviewee, Person)
Pollock, Ludmila (Interviewer, Person)
Clark, Clare (Transcriber, Person)
Viteri, Carlos (Videographer, Person)
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Library and Archives (Publisher, Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online: https://library.cshl.edu/oralhistory/. Select tapes have been digitized thanks to support from CLIR Recordings at Risk Grant awarded in 2021, these tapes are available for research online via our Oral History Website and in person at CSHL Archives. Please contact CSHL Archives archives@cshl.edu with any questions regarding availability.

Biographical / Historical

Anna Marie Skalka, microbiologist, molecular biologist and geneticist, is currently Senior Advisor to the President, Professor Emerita, former W.W. Smith Chair in Cancer Research, and former Senior Vice President for Basic Science and Director of the Institute for Cancer Research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. She completed her Ph.D. at New York University Medical School in 1964 and came to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to continue her graduate work on bacteriophage under Al Hershey. In 1969 she left for the Roche Institute for Molecular Biology and eventually she turned her attention to retroviruses.

At Fox Chase Medical Center, Skalka studies molecular aspects of retroviral replication and hopes to uncover mechanisms of retroviral DNA integration. She has become interested in virally coded integrase, which catalyzes the integration of retroviral DNA into the host cell’s genome. Considering that stable integration of viral DNA into the host cell genome is essential for replication of retroviruses, her studies are important in developing antiviral drugs to treat AIDS.