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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
The Nobel Prize for
Chemistry has been awarded to the American Roger Kornberg, a professor at
Stanford University in California
Two great Universities (Stanford
and Berkeley) are competing for Nobel prize winners. The latest one (Roger
Kornberg, Chemistry), is of special interest since his father was also a Nobel
prize winner being Professor at Stanford!
The prize was given to Prof
Kornberg for his work on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription in
cells. Transcription is an important step in the process by which cells build
proteins from DNA.
"When the telephone first rang
I was completely bewildered," Professor Kornberg said in a telephone interview
with journalists in the Swedish capital. "I'm still shaking. I hope I will be
able to calm down shortly."
Roger Kornberg was the first
to create an actual picture of transcription at the molecular level, in
eukaryotes, the category of organisms which includes animals, plants, fungi and
simple microscopic organisms called protists. His studies on transcription
described how information is taken from genes and converted to molecules called
messenger RNA. These molecules shuttle the information to the cells'
protein-making machinery. Proteins in turn serve as building blocks and
workhorses of the cell, vital to its structure and functions. In 2001, he
published the first molecular snapshot of an enzyme called RNA polymerase II.
Its job is to get the synthesis of proteins underway by copying their genes into
RNAs.
Medical importance
"Understanding of how
transcription works also has a fundamental medical importance," the
Peter Fraser, senior fellow at
the Medical Research Council commented: "If the secret of life could be likened
to a machine, the process of transcription would be a central cog in the
machinery that drives all others. "Kornberg has given us an extraordinarily
detailed view of this machine, which is essential for all life."
Professor Kornberg is
the lone winner of the prize, and the fifth American to win a Nobel prize this
year. The 59-year-old is part of the
His father, Arthur
Kornberg, shared the 1959 Nobel medicine prize with Spaniard Severo Ochoa for
studies of how genetic information is transferred from one DNA molecule to
another. "I have felt for some time that he richly deserved it," said the elder
Kornberg, professor emeritus at the
Father and son
Roger Kornberg said he
remembered traveling to
"Something so remarkable as
this can never be expected even though I was aware of the possibility. I
couldn't conceivably have imagined that it would become reality."
Last year's Nobel
laureates were
The Kornbergs are the sixth
father and son to both win Nobel Prizes.
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