Famous People Infoformation

(Boston, 1934) American biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980 for studies conducted on the sequencing of nucleic acids. He shared the award with Paul Berg and Frederick Sanger.

From childhood he showed great fondness for science (mineralogy and astronomy in particular). During his high school was attracted to inorganic chemistry and nuclear physics, which led him in 1950 to Harvard University, where he majored in physics and chemistry. As a graduate student worked on the theory of elementary particles and quantum field theory at Harvard for a year and then at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) for two years under the leadership of Abdus Salam. He received his Ph.D. in physics at Cambridge in 1957. During that time he met James Watson, who was already famous for his work with DNA.

In 1957 he returned to Harvard and married the poet Celia Stone, whom he had met during their high school years. He spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow and another year as an assistant to Julian Schwinger before becoming assistant professor of physics. After some years he gave many and varied courses in theoretical physics, his interest evolved from the mathematical formulations of theoretical physics at the experimental field.

In the summer of 1960 knew, thanks to James Watson, About the experiment being conducted by Francois Gros with his students. It seemed so interesting that he joined the group during the summer period. They were trying to identify the messenger RNA, a short-lived RNA is a DNA copy of a gene that serves as a transmitter of information from the genome to the ribosomes (the factories where proteins are synthesized). After being used several times to dictate the structure of a protein, messenger RNA is broken down and recycled to make new RNA molecules.

The experiments showed the existence of a new component fleeting they were finally able to determine with accuracy. This experience seemed so exciting to Walter Gilbert continued since then research in molecular biology, but after a year working with messenger RNA returned briefly to physics. In 1961 he published his first work on the messenger RNA in the journal Nature. His last work was published in theoretical physics in 1964 and officially went on to become biophysicist (later would not only ownership in Biophysics, but also in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology).

He resumed his research in biology to study how proteins are synthesized. Showed that a single messenger RNA molecule can serve many ribosomes at a time and a growing polypeptide chain remains attached to a transfer RNA molecule. This latter finding elucidated the mechanism of protein synthesis.

By the mid-sixties, together with Benno Muller-Hill isolated the repressor of the lactose, the first example of a genetic control element. The control function was defined genetically by the work of Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod, but a repressor is produced in such small quantities that it was an extraordinarily elusive biochemical entity. This development gave him international acclaim and the pilgrimage of the best students to his laboratory, which became famous for its friendly atmosphere and warmth, where researchers tried to take the next step in order to complete the puzzle.

In the late sixties, in collaboration with David Dressler, invented the rolling circle model, which describes one of two ways in which DNA molecules autoduplican. In the early seventies isolated DNA fragment which binds the lactose repressor and studied the interaction of bacterial RNA polymerase and the lactose repressor with DNA. In the mid-seventies developed, together with Allan Maxman, rapid chemical sequencing of DNA. At the same time developed some recombinant DNA techniques. In the late seventies worked with Lydia Villa Argiris Efstratiadis and Komarov strains of bacteria that expressed insulin, a product of mammals. He went on to produce useful proteins interested in bacteria and the structure and evolution of DNA sequences.

In 1980 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Frederick Sanger and Paul Berg. International fame long kept busy, visiting laboratories and lecturing. In 1982 he left Harvard to run Biogen, a biotechnology company based in Switzerland and had helped found. The company stumbled and resigned from their positions in 1984, to return back to Harvard to continue his research.