American biochemist who, with Jack Szostak, developed the first artificial chromosome in 1983. Murray and Szostak worked with yeast chromosomes, inserting a number of genes from another organism into the yeast chromosome to create a Yeast Artificial Chromosome (YAC). Socalled "YAC libraries" are used to catalog the genetic information from a number of organisms, helping to organize the vast amount of genetic information that is discovered yearly.