Marshall Warren Nirenberg
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
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Marshall Warren Nirenberg
(born April 10, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.died Jan. 15, 2010, New York) U.S. biochemist. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He demonstrated that each possible triplet (codon) of the four different kinds of nitrogen-containing bases found in DNA and (in some viruses) in RNA (with three exceptions) ultimately causes the incorporation of a specific amino acid into a cell protein. His research earned him a Nobel Prize in 1968, which he shared with Robert William Holley and Har Gobind Khorana, whose work, like Nirenberg's, helped show how genetic instructions in the cell nucleus control the composition of proteins.
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Houghton Mifflin Guide to Science & Technology:
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Marshall Warren Nirenberg
 | Marshall Warren Nirenberg |
| Library of Congress (AP photo) |
[b. New York City, April 10, 1927]
In 1961 Nirenberg became the first person to determine what one letter of the genetic code stands for, using RNA. This opened the way for Nirenberg and colleagues to crack the genetic code completely by 1966, demonstrating which sequence of three nucleotide bases (a codon) determined each of 20 amino acids, along with similar three-letter codes for start and stop.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
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Marshall Warren Nirenberg
Marshall Warren Nirenberg (born 1927) is best known for deciphering the portion of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that is responsible for the synthesis of the numerous protein molecules which form the basis of living cells. In 1968 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.
Nirenberg's research has helped to unravel the DNA genetic code, aiding, for example, in the determination of which genes code for certain hereditary traits. For his contribution to the sciences of genetics and cell biochemistry, Nirenberg was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Robert W. Holley and Har Gobind Khorana.
Nirenberg was born in New York City on April 10, 1927, and moved to Florida with his parents, Harry Edward and Minerva (Bykowsky) Nirenberg, when he was ten years old. He earned his B.S. in 1948 and his M.Sc. in biology in 1952 from the University of Florida. Nirenberg's interest in science extended beyond his formal studies. For two of his undergraduate years he worked as a teaching assistant in biology, and he also spent a brief period as a research assistant in the nutrition laboratory. In 1952, Nirenberg continued his graduate studies at the University of Michigan, this time in the field of biochemistry. Obtaining his Ph.D. in 1957, he wrote his dissertation on the uptake of hexose, a sugar molecule, by ascites tumor cells.
Shortly after earning his Ph.D., Nirenberg began his investigation into the inner workings of the genetic code as an American Cancer Society (ACS) fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Nirenberg continued his research at the NIH after the ACS fellowship ended in 1959, under another fellowship from the Public Health Service (PHS). In 1960, when the PHS fellowship ended, he joined the NIH staff permanently as a research scientist in biochemistry.
After only a brief time conducting research at the NIH, Nirenberg made his mark in genetic research with the most important scientific breakthrough since James D. Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953. Specifically, he discovered the process for unraveling the code of DNA. This process allows scientists to determine the genetic basis of particular hereditary traits. In August of 1961, Nirenberg announced his discovery during a routine presentation of a research paper at a meeting of the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow.
Nirenberg's research involved the genetic code sequences for amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. They link together to form the numerous protein molecules present in the human body. Nirenberg discovered how to determine which sequences patterns code for which amino acids (there are about 20 known amino acids).
Nirenberg's discovery has led to a better understanding of genetically determined diseases and, more controversially, to further research into the controlling of hereditary traits, or genetic engineering. For his research, Nirenberg was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. He shared the honor with scientists Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley. After receiving the Nobel Prize, Nirenberg switched his research focus to other areas of biochemistry, including cellular control mechanisms and the cell differentiation process.
Since first being hired by the NIH in 1960, Nirenberg has served in different capacities. From 1962 until 1966 he was Head of the Section for Biochemical Genetics, National Heart Institute. Since 1966 he has been serving as the Chief of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Other honors bestowed upon Nirenberg, in addition to the Nobel Prize, include honorary membership in the Harvey Society, the Molecular Biology Award from the National Academy of Sciences (1962), National Medal of Science presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson (1965), and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biochemistry (1968). Nirenberg also received numerous honorary degrees from distinguished universities, including the University of Michigan (1965), University of Chicago (1965), Yale University (1965), University of Windsor (1966), George Washington University (1972), and the Weizmann Institute in Israel (1978). Nirenberg is a member of several professional societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society, the Biophysical Society, and the Society for Developmental Biology.
Nirenberg married biochemist Perola Zaltzman in 1961. While described as being a reserved man who engages in little else besides scientific research, Nirenberg has been a strong advocate of government support for scientific research, believing this to be an important factor for the advancement of science.
Further Reading
Wasson, Tyler, editor, Nobel Prize Winners, H. W. Wilson, 1987, pp. 767-768.
New York Times, October 12, 1982, p. C3.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
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Marshall Warren Nirenberg
Nirenberg, Marshall Warren, 1927-, American biochemist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D., Univ. of Michigan, 1947. He spent his entire career as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. Nirenberg was a co-recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. Nirenberg, working with German biochemist Johann Heinrich Matthaei and later American geneticist Philip Leder (postdoctoral researchers in his lab), found that the arrangement of the four types of nucleotides on the DNA molecule (see nucleic acid) determines both the chemical composition and the function of new cells, and identified the sequences of nucleotides, or codons, that specify the 20 amino acids.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Marshall Warren Nirenberg
| Marshall Warren Nirenberg | |
|---|---|
 Nirenberg in 2003 |
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| Born | April 10, 1927 New York City |
| Died | January 15, 2010 (aged 82) New York City |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | University of Florida University of Michigan |
| Known for | genetic code |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 Franklin Medal in 1968 |
Marshall Warren Nirenberg (April 10, 1927 – January 15, 2010)[1] was an American biochemist and geneticist of Jewish origin.[citation needed] He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for "breaking the genetic code" and describing how it operates in protein synthesis. In the same year, together with Har Gobind Khorana, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University.
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Research
By 1959, experiments and analysis such as the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment, the Hershey-Chase experiment, the Watson-Crick structure and the Meselson-Stahl experiment had shown DNA to be the molecule of genetic information. It was not known, however, how DNA directed the expression of proteins, or what role RNA had in these processes. Nirenberg teamed up with Heinrich J. Matthaei at the National Institutes of Health to answer these questions. They produced RNA comprised solely of uracil, a nucleotide that only occurs in RNA. They then added this synthetic poly-uracil RNA into a cell-free extract of Escherichia coli which contained the DNA, RNA, ribosomes and other cellular machinery for protein synthesis. They added DNase, which breaks apart the DNA, so that no additional proteins would be produced other than that from their synthetic RNA. They then added 1 radioactively labeled amino acid, the building blocks of proteins, and 19 unlabeled amino acids to the extract, varying the labeled amino acid in each sample. In the extract containing the radioactively labeled phenylalanine, the resulting protein was also radioactive. They realized that they had found the genetic code for phenylalanine: UUU (three uracil bases in a row) on RNA. This was the first step in deciphering the codons of the genetic code and the first demonstration of messenger RNA (see Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment).[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
In August 1961, at the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow, Nirenberg presented a paper to a small group of scientists. Francis Crick convinced the conference leaders to invite Nirenberg to repeat his performance the next day.[9][10] Speaking before the assembled congress of more than a thousand people, Nirenberg electrified the scientific community. He quickly received great scientific attention for these experiments. Within a few years, his research team had performed similar experiments and found that three-base repeats of adenosine (AAA) produced the amino acid lysine, and cytosine repeats (CCC) produced proline. The next breakthrough came when Philip Leder, a postdoctoral researcher in Nirenberg's lab, developed a method for determining the genetic code on pieces of tRNA (see Nirenberg and Leder experiment). This greatly sped up the assignment of three-base codons to amino acids so that 50 codons were identified in this way. Khorana's experiments confirmed these results and completed the genetic code translation.
The period between 1961 and 1962 is often referred to as the “coding race” because of the competition between the labs of Nirenberg at NIH and Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa at New York University Medical School, who had a massive staff. Faced with the possibility of helping the first NIH scientist win a Nobel prize, many NIH scientists put aside their own work to help Nirenberg in deciphering the mRNA codons for amino acids. Dr. DeWitt Stetten, Jr., director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, called this period of collaboration “NIH's finest hour.”[11]
Nirenberg's later research focused on neuroscience, neural development, and the homeobox genes.
Biography
Nirenberg was born in New York City, the son of Harry and Minerva Nirenberg. He developed rheumatic fever as a boy, so the family moved to Orlando, Florida to take advantage of the subtropical climate. He developed an early interest in biology. In 1948 he received his B.S. degree, and in 1952, a master's degree in zoology from the University of Florida at Gainesville where he was also a member of the Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity.[12] His dissertation for the Master's thesis was an ecological and taxonomic study of caddis flies (Trichoptera). He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1957.
He began his postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1957 as a fellow of the American Cancer Society in what was then called the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases. In 1959 he became a research biochemist at the NIH and began to study the steps that relate DNA, RNA and protein. Nirenberg's groundbreaking experiments advanced him to become the head of the Section of Biochemical Genetics in 1962 in the National Heart Institute (now the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute), where he remained a laboratory chief until his death. He was married in 1961 to Perola Zaltzman, a chemist from the University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, who also worked at NIH and died in 2001. Nirenberg married Myrna M. Weissman, Ph.D., Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2005. He had four stepchildren: Susan Weissman of Evanston, Illinois, Judith Weissman of New York, New York, Sharon Weissman of New Haven, Connecticut, and Jonathan Weissman of San Francisco, California.
Nirenberg was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1964 and the National Medal of Honor in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2001. He died on January 15, 2010, from cancer after several months of illness.
See also
Notes
- ^ Wade, Nicholas (January 21, 2010), "Marshall Nirenberg, Biologist Who Untangled Genetic Code, Dies at 82", NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/us/21nirenberg.html.
- ^ Leder, P; Nirenberg, M W (1964), "RNA CODEWORDS AND PROTEIN SYNTHESIS, III. ON THE NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCE OF A CYSTEINE AND A LEUCINE RNA CODEWORD", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 52 (6): 1521–1529, 1964 December, doi:10.1073/pnas.52.6.1521, PMC 300480, PMID 14243527, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/52/6/1521
- ^ Eiserling, F; Levin, J G; Byrne, R; Karlsson, U; Nirenberg, MW; Sjoestrand, FS (1964), "Polyribosomes and DNA-dependent Amino Acid Incorporation in Escherichia coli Extracts", Journal of Molecular Biology 10 (3): 536–40, 1964 December, doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(64)80073-5, PMID 14257696
- ^ BLADEN, H A; BYRNE, R; LEVIN, J G; NIRENBERG, M W (1965), "AN ELECTRON MICROSCOPIC STUDY OF A DNA-RIBOSOME COMPLEX FORMED IN VITRO", J. Mol. Biol. 11: 78–83, 1965 Jan, doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(65)80172-3, PMID 14255762
- ^ BERNFIELD, M R; NIRENBERG, M W (1965), "RNA CODEWORDS AND PROTEIN SYNTHESIS. THE NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCES OF MULTIPLE CODEWORDS FOR PHENYLALANINE, SERINE, LEUCINE, AND PROLINE", Science 147 (3657): 479–84, 1965 Jan 29, doi:10.1126/science.147.3657.479, PMID 14237203
- ^ TRUPIN, J S; ROTTMAN, F M; BRIMACOMBE, R L; LEDER, P; Bernfield, MR; Nirenberg, MW (1965), "RNA CODEWORDS AND PROTEIN SYNTHESIS, VI. ON THE NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCES OF DEGENERATE CODEWORD SETS FOR ISOLEUCINE, TYROSINE, ASPARAGINE, AND LYSINE", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 53 (4): 807–11, 1965 Apr, doi:10.1073/pnas.53.4.807, PMC 221071, PMID 14324538
- ^ Jones, O W; Nirenberg, M W (1966), "Degeneracy in the amino acid code", Biochim. Biophys. Acta 119 (2): 400–6, 1966 May 19, PMID 5335948
- ^ Kellogg, D A; Doctor, B P; Loebel, J E; Nirenberg, M W (1966), "RNA codons and protein synthesis. IX. Synonym codon recognition by multiple species of valine-, alanine-, and methionine-sRNA", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 55 (4): 912–9, 1966 Apr, doi:10.1073/pnas.55.4.912, PMC 224250, PMID 5327071
- ^ Caskey, C. Thomas (Mar 2010), "Obituary: Marshall Nirenberg (1927–2010)", Nature 464 (7285): 44, doi:10.1038/464044a, PMID 20203601.
- ^ Leder, Philip (Feb 2010), "Retrospective. Marshall Warren Nirenberg (1927–2010)", Science 327 (5968): 972, doi:10.1126/science.1187484, PMID 20167780.
- ^ The PolyU Experiment. history.nih.gov
- ^ Membership Directory, 2010, Pi Lambda Phi Inc.
References
- Voet, Donald and Judith G. Voet. 1995. Biochemistry 2nd ed. John Wilely & Sons, New York.
- U.S. National Library of Medicine. "Profiles in Science: The Marshall W. Nirenberg Papers."
Further reading
- Nobel Biography
- Marshall Nirenberg Papers (1937–2003) – National Library of Medicine finding aid
- The Marshall Nirenberg Papers – Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine
- Free to View Video Interview with Marshall W. Nirenberg provided by the Vega Science Trust.
- The Life and Scientific Work of Marshall W. Nirenberg. (From Richard Olson & Roger Smith (eds.) The Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists. 1998.)
- The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
- Ed Regis (November 2007), "The Forgotten Code Cracker" (print), Scientific American (Scientific American, Inc.): pp. 50–51, "(subtitle) In the 1960's Marshall W. Nirenberg deciphered the genetic code, the combination of A, T, G and C nucleotides that specify amino acids. So why do people think that Francis Crick did it?"
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