He had participated in all the adventures of modern biology and in particular the discovery of messenger RNA.
Biologist François Gros died on Friday at the age of 95, we learned on Sunday from the Academy of Sciences.
"François Gros died on February 18," announced Étienne Ghys, mathematician and perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, a position that François Gros had held from 1991 to 2000.
Ironically, his work has made it possible to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
François Gros was known to be one of the co-discoverers of messenger RNA, the molecular intermediary of the DNA genetic code.
His contribution to the decoding of the gene was crucial and his work paved the way, almost 60 years later, for the use of this technology in the main vaccines used against the virus.
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This world-renowned researcher was born in Paris on April 24, 1925 into a “non-practicing Israelite” family.
He had retreated to Toulouse during the Second World War.
"Perpetually at the mercy of denunciation", he changed his name regularly, he had told in his "Scientific Memoirs - Half a Century of Biology" (2003).
François Gros contributed, alongside the most eminent figures in scientific research, to the birth of molecular biology which was to revolutionize the life sciences.