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American
Biologist Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry for DNA Work |
Posted:
10.09.06
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Last week, American biologist Roger Kornberg of Stanford University
won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work explaining how cells
use genetic information to make proteins.
Printer-friendly version: PDF
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The central dogma of molecular biology is that DNA makes ribonucleic
acid, or RNA, which then makes proteins. It is the proteins, which
number in the millions, that help cells work and give them their
unique characteristics, be they brain cells, kidney cells or heart
cells.
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DNA transcription |
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 Genetic
information would be locked in DNA were it not for the first half
of this protein production process -- DNA transcription -- in
which DNA is converted to "messenger RNA" using a molecule
called "RNA polymerase."
Kornberg was the first to photograph the DNA transcription process,
showing how strands of DNA and fragments of RNA fit into compartments
of the RNA polymerase molecule before producing messenger RNA,
which goes on to create proteins in the cell.
"In an ingenious manner Kornberg has managed to freeze the
construction process of RNA half-way through," the Nobel
committee said. That let him capture the process of transcription
in full flow, which is "truly revolutionary," the committee
said.
"The purpose of our work was to discover, unravel the complexity,
ultimately to visualize directly the machinery that reads out
the genetic information," Kornberg told the NewsHour.
The atomic detail of Kornberg's photographs, taken using X-rays
instead of ordinary light, has allowed scientists to better understand
the process by which RNA is converted into proteins.
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Applications
of Kornberg's work |
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 The
unique properties of stem cells, and even the effects of diseases
like cancer and heart disease, are results of changes to the transcription
process, making Kornberg's work important to medical researchers.
"In some cases, the machinery is perfectly normal but it
makes mistakes, and we are able to better understand how those
mistakes are made and how they're corrected. That's actually a
subject of our ongoing research at the moment," Kornberg
told the NewsHour.
New drugs and therapies can be created down the line, though
Kornberg does not work for any particular industry.
"I'd rather be rich with knowledge than rich in other ways,"
he told the Mercury News.
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Science in
the family |
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Roger Kornberg is not the only one in his family involved in
the sciences. His brother Thomas is a biochemist and his brother
Kenneth is an architect who designs biomedical buildings.
Their mother Sylvy Ruth Levy was a chemist and his father, Arthur
Kornberg, won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1959 with Spaniard
Severo Ochoa for their work in how genetic information is transferred
from one DNA molecule to another.
 "I
took my children to the lab on weekends. And they did trivial
things in the laboratory. And in Roger's case, it was a fascination
that's persisted throughout his life," Arthur Kornberg said
on the Oct. 4 NewsHour.
Roger also acknowledged the role of science in the family.
"Science was a part of dinner conversation and an activity
in the afternoons and on weekends. Scientific reasoning became
second nature," he said.
When Roger was 8 or 9, his parents asked him what he wanted for
Christmas, and he said a week in the lab.
The Kornbergs are not the first to have multiple Nobel winners
in the family. The Curies won five, including two by Marie Curie
for her work on radiation, and in 1915, Sir William Henry Bragg
and his son William Lawrence Bragg shared the prize for their
use of X-rays to study crystals, the method Kornberg used 85 years
later to photograph RNA polymerase.
--Compiled
by Annie Schleicher for NewsHour Extra
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