Har Gobind Khorana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Har Gobind Khorana |
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| Born | January 9, 1922 |
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| Institution | MIT |
| Notable prizes |  Nobel Prize in Medicine (1968) |
Har Gobind Khorana (born January 9, 1922) is a Nobel Prize laureate and a molecular biologist of Punjabi origin. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
Khorana was born to in Raipur in the part of Punjab, that was at that time in British India, but is now in Pakistan. His father was the village "patwari", or taxation official. He was homeschooled by his father, and he later attended D.A.V. Multan High School. He finished his B.Sc. from Punjab University, Lahore in 1943 and M.Sc from Punjab University in 1945. In 1945, he began studies at the University of Liverpool. After earning a PhD in 1948, he continued his postdoctoral studies in Zürich (1948-49). Subsequently, he spent two years at Cambridge and his interests in proteins and nucleic acids took root that time. In 1952 he went to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and in 1960 moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He became the Alfred Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he continues to work.
Har Gobind Khorana was married in 1952 to Esther Elizabeth Sibler, who is of Swiss origin. They have three children: Julia Elizabeth (born May 4th, 1953), Emily Anne (born October 18th, 1954), and Dave Roy (born July 26th, 1958).
Khorana was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Medicine (together with Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg) for work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
Khorana also received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1987.
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[edit] Khorana's synthetic RNA approach
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) with two repeating units (UCUCUCU → UCU CUC UCU) produced two alternating amino acids. This, combined with the Nirenberg and Leder experiment, showed that UCU codes for Serine and CUC codes for Leucine.
RNAs with three repeating units (UACUACUA → UAC UAC UAC, or ACU ACU ACU, or CUA CUA CUA) produced three different strings of amino acids.
RNAs with four repeating units including UAG, UAA, or UGA, produced only dipeptides and tripeptides thus revealing that UAG, UAA and UGA are stop codons.
With this, Dr. Khorana and his team had established that the mother of all codes, the biological language common to all living organisms, is spelled out in three-letter words: each set of three nucleotides codes for a specific amino acid. Their Nobel lecture was delivered on December 12, 1968. Dr. Khorana was also the first to synthesize oligonucleotides, that is, strings of nucleotides. He was the first to isolate DNA ligase, an enzyme that links pieces of DNA together. These custom designed pieces of artificial genes are widely used in biology labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and animals. This invention of Dr. Khorana has become automated and commercialized so that anyone now can order a synthetic gene from any of a number of companies-- one merely needs to fax the genetic sequence to one of the companies to receive an oligonucliotide with the desired sequence.
[edit] Trivia
- Dr. Khorana is very famous in his native Punjab and a short story about his early career is taught widely at the high school level. It details his efforts to find a teaching or research job in Punjab after getting his Ph.D. and how he was unable to find a job despite his excellent credentials since he did not have political "pull" needed for such jobs. The story ends in a sentence that is now legendary in Punjab : "Mr. Khorana, the job was yours and we were about to sign the offer letter but then the Minister called and recommended his nephew and....". Dr. Khorana returned to Liverpool shortly thereafter and never returned to work in Punjab.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Nobel biography
- Homepage - MIT, where he works presently.
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1951: Theiler | 1952: Waksman | 1953: Krebs, Lipmann | 1954: Enders, Weller, Robbins | 1955: Theorell | 1956: Cournand, Forssmann, Richards | 1957: Bovet | 1958: Beadle, Tatum, Lederberg | 1959: Ochoa, Kornberg | 1960: Burnet, Medawar | 1961: Békésy | 1962: Crick, Watson, Wilkins | 1963: Eccles, Hodgkin, Huxley | 1964: Bloch, Lynen | 1965: Jacob, Lwoff, Monod | 1966: Rous, Huggins | 1967: Granit, Hartline, Wald | 1968: Holley, Khorana, Nirenberg | 1969: Delbrück, Hershey, Luria | 1970: Katz, Euler, Axelrod | 1971: Sutherland | 1972: Edelman, Porter | 1973: Frisch, Lorenz, Tinbergen | 1974: Claude, Duve, Palade | 1975: Baltimore, Dulbecco, Temin |
Categories: People associated with the University of Liverpool | 1922 births | Living people | Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine | Indian biologists | Indian Americans | Indian Nobel laureates | Members and associates of the United States National Academy of Sciences | Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences | National Medal of Science recipients | Foreign Members of the Royal Society | Ravians | Punjabi people
