Jacques Lucien Monod (February 9, 1910 - May 31, 1976) was a biologist and a Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine in 1965. Monod (along with François Jacob) is famous for his work on the Lac operon. Study of the control of expression of genes in the Lac operon provided the first example of a transcriptional regulation system.

The experimental system used by Jacob and Monod was a common bacterium, E. coli, but the basic regulatory concept (described in the Lac operon article) that was discovered by Jacob and Monod is fundamental to cellular regulation for all organisms. The key idea is that E. coli does not bother to waste energy making such enzymes if there is no need to metabolize lactose, such as when other sugars like glucose are available.

Bibliography

• Chance and Necessity

External link

• Biography at Nobel e-Museum