Edward Kravitz
Encyclopedia
Edward Arthur Kravitz, Ph.D. (born December 19, 1932) is the George Packer Berry Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School
. Early in his scientific career Ed and colleagues demonstrated that gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA
) functions as a neurotransmitter. In addition, he and Antony Stretton
were the first to use the intracellular dye procion yellow to visualize neuronal architecture. Later, Ed’s work with neuroamines demonstrated that serotonin and octopamine act as synaptic modulators. Ed continued to explore the function of amines using Homarus americanus, the American lobster
, as a model organism to study aggression. He currently works on aggressive behavior using the genetically manipulable model organism, Drosophila melanogaster
, the fruit fly.
during the Great Depression
. More than once he skipped an entire grade in order to be challenged in school and ended up in college at age 16. Ed met his wife Kathryn Anne Frakes at the University of Michigan
; they were married in 1959. Together they had two sons, David (b. February 21, 1964) and James (b. May 14, 1966).
, Ed remained in the neighborhood he grew up in and began his studies at City College of New York
(CCNY). In 1954 Ed graduated from CCNY with a double major in Biology and Chemistry. Unsure of what to do next, Ed applied to be an officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corps as well as to two medical schools, and for a Research Assistant position. He ended up at Sloan-Kettering in the laboratory of George Tarnowski. Under the supervision of George Tarnowski, Lou Kaplan, a young biochemist at the time, and Christine Riley, director of the chemotherapy unit, Ed began an independent research project studying amino acid metabolism in ascites tumor cells. It was this experience that led to Ed’s decision to pursue a career as a Scientist.
In 1954, Ed began graduate school at the University of Michigan
. Ed met a lot of great colleagues at this time, including Marshall Nirenberg with whom he shared an apartment on Huron Avenue in Ann Arbor. Ed’s thesis work was done in the laboratory of Armand Guarino and led to his first paper “On the effect of inorganic phosphate on hexose phosphate metabolism” which was published in the journal Science. In 1959 Ed received his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and began working in Earl Stadtman’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health
.
Although at one time Ed planned on pursuing two additional post-doctoral positions after studying morphine
metabolism in the Stadtman laboratory, he was recruited to Harvard Medical School
by Steve Kuffler in 1960. Almost immediately, Ed began working with Steve Kuffler, Dave Potter and Nico van Gelder on the experiments that would eventually demonstrate that GABA
functions as a neurotransmitter. From his biochemistry training and friends at NIH, Ed knew that by growing Pseudomonas fluorescens
on GABA as a sole carbon source, an enzymatic assay could be used to quantify the amount of GABA in the neurons of crustaceans. Using this enzymatic assay, the group quickly learned that GABA was highly expressed in inhibitory neurons. Later Ed worked with Masanori Otsuka, Les Iversen, and Zach Hall to show that GABA was released from inhibitory neurons of lobsters. While today Ed’s work on GABA is well respected, it was quite controversial when first presented publicly. After Ed’s first talk on the work at the Marine Biological Laboratory
in Woods Hole, David Nachmanson commented “Well, we don’t know what that little bit of an amino acid that you see being released is when you stimulate a nerve, but it certainly is not a chemical transmitter compound, because we all know that transmission is electrical”.
The second project Ed took on in the mid-1960s was much more anatomical in nature. In collaboration with his postdoctoral fellow, Antony "Tony" Stretton
, Ed began developing a technique to visualize the structure of neurons in order to determine whether neuronal shapes are genetically specified. Two other Scientists at Harvard Medical School
, Ed Furshpan and Jaime Alvarez, had been using intracellular dyes to localize their recording electrodes in the brains of fish, but none of their dyes were able to stain the neuropil processes of the injected neurons. Ed and Tony
contacted Imperial Chemicals, a manufacturer of fabric staining dyes located in Providence, RI and obtained over 120 dyes to inject into lobster neurons. In the end they found a single dye, Procion Yellow, that was highly soluble, readily released from microelectrodes, completely filled cells and their processes, survived fixation and dehydration, and, most importantly, was fluorescent. Using Procion Yellow, Ed, Tony
, and Edith Maier found that neurons from two different animals had strikingly similar morphological shapes. They eventually injected over 100 physiologically identified neurons, processed and sectioned the ganglia, and reconstructed the cell shapes by hand from photographs of the serial sections.
In the 1970s Ed’s laboratory turned their focus back to neurotransmitters. After finding evidence that glutamate acts as an excitatory transmitter in crustaceans, they found that acetylcholine
functions as the lobster sensory transmitter compound. Around this time, the laboratory also began experimenting with the neuroamines serotonin
and octopamine
. By trying to understand how naturally occurring neuromodulators might act, Marge Livingstone, a graduate student at the time, injected serotonin
or octopamine
into two different lobsters. The result completely astounded Ed! The lobster injected with serotonin
stood tall and looked just like a dominant animal while the lobster injected with octopamine
adopted a lowered posture and looked like a subordinate animal. These lobster injection experiments were the birth of the aggressive behavior studies that are still ongoing in Ed’s laboratory today.
In the 1980s and 1990s Ed’s laboratory evolved into a neuroethology
laboratory. In collaboration with his postdoctoral fellow Robert Huber, a quantitative analysis of lobster fighting behavior was underway. Lobsters proved to be an excellent model system for studies on aggression due to the ease in getting animals to fight and that fact that anatomical and physiological studies were possible. However, Ed soon realized that in order to discover new neurons and pathways that were important for aggression, he needed an organism whose genome
was sequenced and where genetic methods were available for solving sophisticated problems. This led to the birth of the Fruit Fly Fight Club. The studies began with three Harvard undergraduates, Selby Chen, Ann Lee, and Nina Bowens who did the initial experiments of getting two flies to fight, and are ongoing in his laboratory.
(1976)
Einstein Visiting Fellow, Hebrew University (1981)
National Academy of Sciences
, USA (1984)
Institute of Medicine (1986)
Governing Council, Institute of Medicine (1990–1994)
Humboldt Research Award (1992)
John S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1992)
A. Clifford Barger Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award, Harvard Medical School (1998)
Education Award, Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs (2001)
Harold Amos Diversity Award, Harvard Medical School (2007)
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
. Early in his scientific career Ed and colleagues demonstrated that gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA
Gabâ
Gabâ or gabaa, for the people in many parts of the Philippines), is the concept of a non-human and non-divine, imminent retribution. A sort of negative karma, it is generally seen as an evil effect on a person because of their wrongdoings or transgressions...
) functions as a neurotransmitter. In addition, he and Antony Stretton
Antony Stretton
Antony "Tony" Oliver Ward Stretton, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist, faculty member of the , and the John Bascom Professor of at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is married to fellow scientist, Philippa Claude.Tony worked with Vernon M...
were the first to use the intracellular dye procion yellow to visualize neuronal architecture. Later, Ed’s work with neuroamines demonstrated that serotonin and octopamine act as synaptic modulators. Ed continued to explore the function of amines using Homarus americanus, the American lobster
American lobster
The American lobster, Homarus americanus, is a species of lobster found on the Atlantic coast of North America, chiefly from Labrador to New Jersey. Within North America, it is also known as the northern lobster or Maine lobster. It can reach a body length of , and a mass of over , making it the...
, as a model organism to study aggression. He currently works on aggressive behavior using the genetically manipulable model organism, Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster is a species of Diptera, or the order of flies, in the family Drosophilidae. The species is known generally as the common fruit fly or vinegar fly. Starting from Charles W...
, the fruit fly.
Personal life
Ed Kravitz was born in New York to Ada Machlus and Isadore Kravitz. He has one older brother, Bill, born in 1929. Kravitz grew up in The BronxThe Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. More than once he skipped an entire grade in order to be challenged in school and ended up in college at age 16. Ed met his wife Kathryn Anne Frakes at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
; they were married in 1959. Together they had two sons, David (b. February 21, 1964) and James (b. May 14, 1966).
Scientific career
After graduating from Evander Childs High School in The BronxThe Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, Ed remained in the neighborhood he grew up in and began his studies at City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
(CCNY). In 1954 Ed graduated from CCNY with a double major in Biology and Chemistry. Unsure of what to do next, Ed applied to be an officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corps as well as to two medical schools, and for a Research Assistant position. He ended up at Sloan-Kettering in the laboratory of George Tarnowski. Under the supervision of George Tarnowski, Lou Kaplan, a young biochemist at the time, and Christine Riley, director of the chemotherapy unit, Ed began an independent research project studying amino acid metabolism in ascites tumor cells. It was this experience that led to Ed’s decision to pursue a career as a Scientist.
In 1954, Ed began graduate school at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. Ed met a lot of great colleagues at this time, including Marshall Nirenberg with whom he shared an apartment on Huron Avenue in Ann Arbor. Ed’s thesis work was done in the laboratory of Armand Guarino and led to his first paper “On the effect of inorganic phosphate on hexose phosphate metabolism” which was published in the journal Science. In 1959 Ed received his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and began working in Earl Stadtman’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
.
Although at one time Ed planned on pursuing two additional post-doctoral positions after studying morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
metabolism in the Stadtman laboratory, he was recruited to Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
by Steve Kuffler in 1960. Almost immediately, Ed began working with Steve Kuffler, Dave Potter and Nico van Gelder on the experiments that would eventually demonstrate that GABA
Gabâ
Gabâ or gabaa, for the people in many parts of the Philippines), is the concept of a non-human and non-divine, imminent retribution. A sort of negative karma, it is generally seen as an evil effect on a person because of their wrongdoings or transgressions...
functions as a neurotransmitter. From his biochemistry training and friends at NIH, Ed knew that by growing Pseudomonas fluorescens
Pseudomonas fluorescens
Pseudomonas fluorescens is a common Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium. It belongs to the Pseudomonas genus; 16S rRNA analysis has placed P. fluorescens in the P. fluorescens group within the genus, to which it lends its name....
on GABA as a sole carbon source, an enzymatic assay could be used to quantify the amount of GABA in the neurons of crustaceans. Using this enzymatic assay, the group quickly learned that GABA was highly expressed in inhibitory neurons. Later Ed worked with Masanori Otsuka, Les Iversen, and Zach Hall to show that GABA was released from inhibitory neurons of lobsters. While today Ed’s work on GABA is well respected, it was quite controversial when first presented publicly. After Ed’s first talk on the work at the Marine Biological Laboratory
Marine Biological Laboratory
The Marine Biological Laboratory is an international center for research and education in biology, biomedicine and ecology. Founded in 1888, the MBL is the oldest independent marine laboratory in the Americas, taking advantage of a coastal setting in the Cape Cod village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts...
in Woods Hole, David Nachmanson commented “Well, we don’t know what that little bit of an amino acid that you see being released is when you stimulate a nerve, but it certainly is not a chemical transmitter compound, because we all know that transmission is electrical”.
The second project Ed took on in the mid-1960s was much more anatomical in nature. In collaboration with his postdoctoral fellow, Antony "Tony" Stretton
Antony Stretton
Antony "Tony" Oliver Ward Stretton, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist, faculty member of the , and the John Bascom Professor of at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is married to fellow scientist, Philippa Claude.Tony worked with Vernon M...
, Ed began developing a technique to visualize the structure of neurons in order to determine whether neuronal shapes are genetically specified. Two other Scientists at Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
, Ed Furshpan and Jaime Alvarez, had been using intracellular dyes to localize their recording electrodes in the brains of fish, but none of their dyes were able to stain the neuropil processes of the injected neurons. Ed and Tony
Antony Stretton
Antony "Tony" Oliver Ward Stretton, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist, faculty member of the , and the John Bascom Professor of at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is married to fellow scientist, Philippa Claude.Tony worked with Vernon M...
contacted Imperial Chemicals, a manufacturer of fabric staining dyes located in Providence, RI and obtained over 120 dyes to inject into lobster neurons. In the end they found a single dye, Procion Yellow, that was highly soluble, readily released from microelectrodes, completely filled cells and their processes, survived fixation and dehydration, and, most importantly, was fluorescent. Using Procion Yellow, Ed, Tony
Antony Stretton
Antony "Tony" Oliver Ward Stretton, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist, faculty member of the , and the John Bascom Professor of at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is married to fellow scientist, Philippa Claude.Tony worked with Vernon M...
, and Edith Maier found that neurons from two different animals had strikingly similar morphological shapes. They eventually injected over 100 physiologically identified neurons, processed and sectioned the ganglia, and reconstructed the cell shapes by hand from photographs of the serial sections.
In the 1970s Ed’s laboratory turned their focus back to neurotransmitters. After finding evidence that glutamate acts as an excitatory transmitter in crustaceans, they found that acetylcholine
Acetylcholine
The chemical compound acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter in both the peripheral nervous system and central nervous system in many organisms including humans...
functions as the lobster sensory transmitter compound. Around this time, the laboratory also began experimenting with the neuroamines serotonin
Serotonin
Serotonin or 5-hydroxytryptamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Biochemically derived from tryptophan, serotonin is primarily found in the gastrointestinal tract, platelets, and in the central nervous system of animals including humans...
and octopamine
Octopamine
Octopamine is an endogenous biogenic amine that is closely related to norepinephrine, and has effects on the adrenergic and dopaminergic systems. It is also found naturally in numerous plants, including bitter orange. Biosynthesis of the D--enantiomer of octopamine is by β-hydroxylation of...
. By trying to understand how naturally occurring neuromodulators might act, Marge Livingstone, a graduate student at the time, injected serotonin
Serotonin
Serotonin or 5-hydroxytryptamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Biochemically derived from tryptophan, serotonin is primarily found in the gastrointestinal tract, platelets, and in the central nervous system of animals including humans...
or octopamine
Octopamine
Octopamine is an endogenous biogenic amine that is closely related to norepinephrine, and has effects on the adrenergic and dopaminergic systems. It is also found naturally in numerous plants, including bitter orange. Biosynthesis of the D--enantiomer of octopamine is by β-hydroxylation of...
into two different lobsters. The result completely astounded Ed! The lobster injected with serotonin
Serotonin
Serotonin or 5-hydroxytryptamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Biochemically derived from tryptophan, serotonin is primarily found in the gastrointestinal tract, platelets, and in the central nervous system of animals including humans...
stood tall and looked just like a dominant animal while the lobster injected with octopamine
Octopamine
Octopamine is an endogenous biogenic amine that is closely related to norepinephrine, and has effects on the adrenergic and dopaminergic systems. It is also found naturally in numerous plants, including bitter orange. Biosynthesis of the D--enantiomer of octopamine is by β-hydroxylation of...
adopted a lowered posture and looked like a subordinate animal. These lobster injection experiments were the birth of the aggressive behavior studies that are still ongoing in Ed’s laboratory today.
In the 1980s and 1990s Ed’s laboratory evolved into a neuroethology
Neuroethology
Neuroethology is the evolutionary and comparative approach to the study of animal behavior and its underlying mechanistic control by the nervous system...
laboratory. In collaboration with his postdoctoral fellow Robert Huber, a quantitative analysis of lobster fighting behavior was underway. Lobsters proved to be an excellent model system for studies on aggression due to the ease in getting animals to fight and that fact that anatomical and physiological studies were possible. However, Ed soon realized that in order to discover new neurons and pathways that were important for aggression, he needed an organism whose genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
was sequenced and where genetic methods were available for solving sophisticated problems. This led to the birth of the Fruit Fly Fight Club. The studies began with three Harvard undergraduates, Selby Chen, Ann Lee, and Nina Bowens who did the initial experiments of getting two flies to fight, and are ongoing in his laboratory.
Honors and Awards (partial list)
American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
(1976)
Einstein Visiting Fellow, Hebrew University (1981)
National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
, USA (1984)
Institute of Medicine (1986)
Governing Council, Institute of Medicine (1990–1994)
Humboldt Research Award (1992)
John S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1992)
A. Clifford Barger Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award, Harvard Medical School (1998)
Education Award, Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs (2001)
Harold Amos Diversity Award, Harvard Medical School (2007)