Elaine Ostrander

Who is this?

Elaine Ann Ostrander is an American geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She holds a number of professional academic appointments, currently serving as Distinguished and Senior Investigator and head of the NHGRI Section of Comparative Genomics; and Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch. She is known for her research on prostate cancer susceptibility in humans and for conducting genetic investigations with the Canis familiaris —the domestic dog— model, which she has used to study disease susceptibility and frequency and other aspects of natural variation across mammals. In 2007, her laboratory showed that much of the variation in body size of domestic dogs is due to sequence changes in a single gene encoding a growth-promoting protein.

Career

1. 1958
   Born
2. 2012
   Won Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
3. 2013
   Won Genetics Society of America Medal
4. 2019
   Member of National Academy of Sciences
5. 2019
   Won honorary doctor of the University of Rennes I
6. Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Trivia

• •Place of birth: Syracuse
• •Citizenship: United States
• •Known as: geneticist