Stanford Biophysicist Jody Puglisi Wins 2027 Tinoco Award for RNA and Ribosome Research

The Biophysical Society has announced that Joseph D. (Jody) Puglisi of Stanford University School of Medicine will receive the 2027 Ignacio Tinoco Award in Physical Chemistry of Macromolecules, one of the most prestigious honors in a field that sits at the crossroads of physics, chemistry, and biology. Puglisi will be formally recognized at the Society’s 71st Annual Meeting, which will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from February 20 to 24, 2027. The award celebrates investigators whose work has been transformative within the physical chemistry of macromolecules, with a particular emphasis on nucleic acids, the family of molecules that includes DNA and RNA.

The Society cited two pillars of Puglisi’s scientific career as the basis for the honor. The first is a body of sophisticated nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, studies that have advanced fundamental concepts of how RNA is recognized by other molecules. The second is a series of groundbreaking single-molecule experiments using fluorescence resonance energy transfer, commonly known as FRET, that have illuminated the inner workings of the ribosome, the molecular machine that translates genetic information into proteins. Together, these contributions have shaped how an entire generation of researchers thinks about RNA structure, dynamics, and function.

The award’s namesake carries deep personal significance in this case. Ignacio “Nacho” Tinoco, after whom the prize is named, was Puglisi’s mentor, and his contributions to the spectroscopic, thermodynamic, structural, and single-molecule study of RNA are considered foundational to the modern understanding of the physical principles governing macromolecules. Tinoco challenged the biophysics community to continually push the boundaries of fundamental understanding, and the award created in his memory recognizes scientists who carry that spirit forward. That Puglisi, a direct scientific descendant of Tinoco, should now receive the honor bearing his mentor’s name gives the 2027 announcement a rare narrative symmetry.

Biophysical Society President Karen Fleming of Johns Hopkins University praised Puglisi’s originality and the depth of his influence. “Jody is one of the most creative and innovative scientists in the field of translation,” Fleming said. “His recognition aptly honors the legacy of Ignacio “Nacho” Tinoco, Jody’s mentor, who challenged our community to continually push our fundamental understanding of biophysics.” Fleming added that Puglisi’s contributions are unique, noting that his research over the past decades has provided physical and structural foundations for RNA’s dynamic role in biology and has revealed many of the most complex yet fundamental properties of RNA-mediated biology.

To appreciate why Puglisi’s NMR work earned such recognition, it helps to understand what the technique makes possible. NMR spectroscopy allows researchers to probe the structure and motion of molecules at atomic resolution in solution, closer to the conditions of a living cell than many other structural methods. RNA, however, is notoriously difficult to study this way. Unlike proteins, many RNA molecules are flexible, dynamic, and conformationally heterogeneous, adopting ensembles of shapes rather than a single rigid structure. Extracting meaningful structural and dynamic information from such systems demands both methodological ingenuity and deep physical insight, qualities that have characterized Puglisi’s approach throughout his career.

Through decades of NMR studies, Puglisi and his collaborators helped establish how RNA molecules are recognized by binding partners, including proteins and small molecules. RNA recognition underlies a vast range of biological processes, from the regulation of gene expression to the action of antibiotics that target bacterial ribosomes. By defining the structural principles that govern these interactions, his work provided a conceptual framework that other laboratories have built upon, connecting atomic-level detail to the broader mechanics of molecular biology. This kind of fundamental knowledge is also a starting point for practical applications, since many drugs work by binding to RNA or to the molecular machines that interact with it.

The second strand of Puglisi’s recognized work, single-molecule FRET, represents a different but complementary way of seeing biology. In a FRET experiment, two fluorescent tags are placed on a molecule or molecular complex at carefully chosen positions. When the tags come close together, energy transfers between them, producing a signal that reports on the distance between the labeled sites. By monitoring individual molecules one at a time, researchers can watch molecular machines move in real time, capturing transient states and rare events that are invisible to methods that average signals over enormous populations of molecules. For something as dynamic as the ribosome, this capability is transformative.

Using these single-molecule approaches, Puglisi’s laboratory has dissected some of the most intricate behaviors of the ribosome during translation, the process by which messenger RNA is decoded into amino acid chains. The Society’s announcement specifically highlighted his studies of translational frameshifting, bypassing, stalling, and pausing during elongation. Frameshifting occurs when the ribosome slips by one or more nucleotides, reading the genetic message in a different frame and producing a different protein, a mechanism that certain viruses exploit and that cells use for regulation. Bypassing, meanwhile, allows a ribosome to skip over stretches of mRNA, while stalling and pausing during elongation influence how quickly and accurately proteins are made. Observing these events directly, one ribosome at a time, revealed kinetic details and intermediate states that population-level experiments simply could not resolve.

What makes this body of work especially significant is how it reframed the ribosome from a static structure into a dynamic machine. High-resolution structures had provided stunning snapshots of the ribosome at work, but the transitions between those states, their timing, and their probabilities remained largely hidden. Single-molecule FRET brought those dynamics into view, showing how the ribosome samples different conformations, how transfer RNAs move through the machine, and how the messenger RNA itself can be handled in unexpected ways. In doing so, Puglisi’s research connected the physical chemistry of molecular motion to one of biology’s most essential processes, the synthesis of every protein in every living cell.

The Biophysical Society, founded in 1958, is a professional scientific society established to lead a global community working at the interface of the physical and life sciences, across all levels of complexity, and to foster the dissemination of that knowledge. With roughly 6,000 members located around the world, the Society promotes growth in the field through its Annual Meeting, its publications, and its outreach activities, and its members teach and conduct research in colleges, universities, laboratories, government agencies, and industry. The Tinoco Award, presented within that community, honors a legacy of rigorous, quantitative inquiry into the molecules of life. When Puglisi accepts the 2027 prize in Philadelphia, the moment will recognize not only an individual career of technical brilliance and conceptual clarity, but also a scientific lineage running from Tinoco’s pioneering studies of RNA physical chemistry to the single-molecule era in which the movements of individual ribosomes can be watched as they read the genetic code.

Subject of Research: Physical chemistry of RNA and ribosome function recognized by the Biophysical Society's 2027 Ignacio Tinoco Award

Article Title: Joseph D. (Jody) Puglisi to receive the 2027 Ignacio Tinoco Award in Physical Chemistry of Macromolecules

Article References: Joseph D. (Jody) Puglisi to receive the 2027 Ignacio Tinoco Award in Physical Chemistry of Macromolecules. (n.d.). Original publication

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Keywords: Joseph Puglisi, Biophysical Society, Ignacio Tinoco Award, NMR spectroscopy, single-molecule FRET, RNA recognition, ribosome, translation, translational frameshifting, physical chemistry, macromolecules, Stanford University