Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence". He has been selected to receive the 2015 Othmer Gold Medal. Research Sharp's current research focuses on small RNAs and other types of non-coding RNAs. His laboratory works to identify the target mRNAs of microRNAs (miRNAs), and has discovered a class of miRNAs that are produced from sequences adjacent to transcription start sites. His laboratory also studies how miRNA gene regulation functions in angiogenesis and cellular stress. Biography Sharp was born in Falmouth, Kentucky, the son of Kathrin (Colvin) and Joseph Walter Sharp. He married Ann Holcombe in 1964, and they have three daughters. Sharp studied at Union College and majored in chemistry and mathematics, afterwards completing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1969. Following his Ph.D., he did his postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology until 1971, where he studied plasmids. Later, he studied gene expression in human cells at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a senior scientist under James D. Watson. In 1974, he was offered a position at MIT by biologist Salvador Luria. He was director of MIT's Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research) from 1985 to 1991; head of the Biology department from 1991 to 1999; and founder and director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research from 2000 to 2004. In 1995, the FBI confirmed that Sharp received a letter from Ted Kaczynski, insinuating that Sharp would become a target of the Unabomber because of his work in genetics, stating that "it would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics." He is currently a professor of Biology and member of the Koch Institute, and has been an Institute Professor since 1999. He is also the chair of the advisory board of the MIT Jameel Clinic. Sharp co-founded Biogen, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, and Magen Biosciences, and has served on the boards of all three companies. Awards and honors In addition to the Nobel Prize, Sharp has won several