Laura McKnight
Jeff McKnight, a molecular biologist at the University of Oregon, died in October at the age of 36.
McKnight’s research focused on chromatin, a complex of DNA and proteins that controls when and how DNA can be accessed for replication and gene expression. He was one of the earliest researchers in the world capable of directly manipulating its structure, stemming back to his postdoctoral work at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center using the model organism
Saccharomyces cerevisiae. When he had started his own lab in 2016, McKnight said at the time that his “real dream” was to apply his work to the dozens of human diseases that involve some level of chromatin disruption, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s.