Founding UCSD member, breakthrough geneticist dies.

Founding UCSD Member, Breakthrough Geneticist Dies: One of the founding professors at the UC San Diego's School of Medicine and a pioneer in the human genetics field has died.

Jarvis "Jay" Edwin Seegmiller, 85, passed on May 31 after a brief respiratory illness, according to the university.

Edward Holmes, vice chancellor of health sciences, said Seegmiller was "one of the giants of American medicine."

Seegmiller was best known for his discovery of the enzyme defect in Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome, a rare, but fatal disorder of the nervous system that causes severe mental retardation and self-mutilation impulses.

Seegmiller was one of the first researchers to use tissue culture to study metabolic defects. While he worked in the field of human biochemical genetics, he had a keen interest in how genetically determined defects in metabolism lead to some forms of arthritis.

Although retired from UCSD, he continued to serve as associate director of the Stein Institute for Research on Aging. While at UCSD, he had served as a Macy Scholar both at Oxford University and the Basel Institute in Switzerland. He was also a John Simon Guggenheim fellow at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne.

Seegmiller had conducted research in South America, as well as at Harvard Medical School, and had trained at the National Institutes of Health.

He received several awards for his contributions and was involved in numerous industry trade groups and activities.

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