[1] He played a critical role in developing adenovirus as an experimental system and made many contributions to virology and molecular biology, leading to over 300 authored/co-authored publications[1] and one U.S. patent (No.

[1][5] Green was one of the founding scientists in the field of tumor virology,[1] an area of biomedical research investigating the role that viruses play in cancer.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Green was among the first scientists in the world to study biochemical features of virus replication in cell culture and to develop and apply the emerging concepts of molecular biology.

[1][25] This finding was not only of scientific interest, but it also raised concerns because the military was using live adenoviruses as vaccines against adenovirus-induced acute respiratory disease.

These classic studies served to establish adenoviruses as a powerful model system that has since been used to address more global questions about virus replication, human cell molecular biology, infection and immunity, and neoplastic transformation.

In subsequent years, the study of adenoviruses has provided key insights into tumor suppressors, cell proliferation, and the host immune response.

In 1966, Green published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing for the first time that transformed cells express adenovirus-specific RNA that could be labeled in a fashion that would allow detection based on hybridization to adenovirus DNA immobilized on filters.

This later work played a key role in further establishing adenovirus as an experimental system, attracting other research groups and producing many important discoveries.

For example, RNA splicing was discovered using the adenovirus system by researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (work that led to a Nobel Prize in 1989 and 1993).

Before reverse transcriptase was discovered by David Baltimore and Howard Temin in 1970 (work that earned them a Nobel Prize), Green wrote a review predicting that the enzyme must exist in the virion of retroviruses.

In the early 1970s, he and his co-workers conducted important studies on the biochemical features of reverse transcriptase of avian and murine RNA tumor viruses.

Tremendous effort was directed to the ‘simultaneous detection’ assay in which proteins are extracted from tumor samples, separated by size, and then examined for reverse transcriptase activity.

This institute and its research faculty was the site of numerous important studies on viruses, cancer, AIDS,[39][40][41][42][43] and contemporary molecular biology.