Marshall Warren Nirenberg - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Marshall Warren Nirenberg (April 10, 1927 – January 15, 2010) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Biochemist

Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. Typical biochemists study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. The prefix of "bio" in "biochemist" can be understood as a fusion of "biological chemist."-Role:...

and geneticist

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

of Jewish origin. He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...

in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley

Robert W. Holley

Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.Holley was born in Urbana, Illinois, and graduated from Urbana High School in 1938...

for "breaking the genetic code

Genetic code

The genetic code is the set of rules by which information encoded in genetic material is translated into proteins by living cells....

" 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

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers that have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemistry....

from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

Research

By 1959, experiments and analysis such as the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment

Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment

The Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment was an experimental demonstration, reported in 1944 by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty, that DNA is the substance that causes bacterial transformation...

, the Hershey-Chase experiment

Hershey-Chase experiment

The Hershey–Chase experiments were a series of experiments conducted in 1952 by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase, which helped to confirm that DNA was the genetic material. While DNA had been known to biologists since 1869, a few scientists still assumed at the time that proteins carried the...

, the Watson-Crick structure and the Meselson-Stahl experiment

Meselson-Stahl experiment

The Meselson–Stahl experiment was an experiment by Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl in 1958 which supported the hypothesis that DNA replication was semiconservative. Semiconservative replication means that when the double stranded DNA helix was replicated, each of the two double stranded DNA...

had shown DNA

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

to be the molecule of genetic information. It was not known, however, how DNA

DNA

directed the expression of proteins, or what role RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

had in these processes. Nirenberg teamed up with Heinrich J. Matthaei

Heinrich J. Matthaei

J. Heinrich Matthaei is a German biochemist. He is best known for his unique contribution to solving the genetic code on May 15, 1961...

at the National Institutes of Health

National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...

to answer these questions. They produced RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

comprised solely of uracil

Uracil

Uracil is one of the four nucleobases in the nucleic acid of RNA that are represented by the letters A, G, C and U. The others are adenine, cytosine, and guanine. In RNA, uracil binds to adenine via two hydrogen bonds. In DNA, the uracil nucleobase is replaced by thymine.Uracil is a common and...

, a nucleotide

Nucleotide

Nucleotides are molecules that, when joined together, make up the structural units of RNA and DNA. In addition, nucleotides participate in cellular signaling , and are incorporated into important cofactors of enzymatic reactions...

that only occurs in RNA. They then added this synthetic poly-uracil RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

into a cell-free extract of Escherichia coli
Escherichia coli
Escherichia coli is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms . Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some serotypes can cause serious food poisoning in humans, and are occasionally responsible for product recalls...

which contained the DNA

DNA

, RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

, ribosome

Ribosome

A ribosome is a component of cells that assembles the twenty specific amino acid molecules to form the particular protein molecule determined by the nucleotide sequence of an RNA molecule....

s and other cellular machinery for protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

synthesis. They added DNase, which breaks apart the DNA, so that no additional proteins would be produced other than that from their synthetic RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

. They then added 1 radioactively labeled amino acid

Amino acid

Amino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...

, 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

Phenylalanine

Phenylalanine is an α-amino acid with the formula C6H5CH2CHCOOH. This essential amino acid is classified as nonpolar because of the hydrophobic nature of the benzyl side chain. L-Phenylalanine is an electrically neutral amino acid, one of the twenty common amino acids used to biochemically form...

, the resulting protein was also radioactive. They realized that they had found the genetic code

Genetic code

The genetic code is the set of rules by which information encoded in genetic material is translated into proteins by living cells....

for phenylalanine

Phenylalanine

: UUU (three uracil

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

Messenger RNA

Messenger RNA is a molecule of RNA encoding a chemical "blueprint" for a protein product. mRNA is transcribed from a DNA template, and carries coding information to the sites of protein synthesis: the ribosomes. Here, the nucleic acid polymer is translated into a polymer of amino acids: a protein...

(see Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment
Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment
The Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment was a scientific experiment performed on May 15, 1961, by Marshall W. Nirenberg and his post doctoral fellow, Heinrich J. Matthaei...

).

In August 1961, at the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow, Nirenberg presented a paper to a small group of scientists. Francis Crick

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...

convinced the conference leaders to invite Nirenberg to repeat his performance the next day. 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

Lysine

Lysine is an α-amino acid with the chemical formula HO2CCH4NH2. It is an essential amino acid, which means that the human body cannot synthesize it. Its codons are AAA and AAG....

, and cytosine

Cytosine

Cytosine is one of the four main bases found in DNA and RNA, along with adenine, guanine, and thymine . It is a pyrimidine derivative, with a heterocyclic aromatic ring and two substituents attached . The nucleoside of cytosine is cytidine...

repeats (CCC) produced proline

Proline

Proline is an α-amino acid, one of the twenty DNA-encoded amino acids. Its codons are CCU, CCC, CCA, and CCG. It is not an essential amino acid, which means that the human body can synthesize it. It is unique among the 20 protein-forming amino acids in that the α-amino group is secondary...

. The next breakthrough came when Philip Leder

Philip Leder

Philip Leder is an American geneticist. He was born in Washington, D.C. and studied at Harvard University, graduating in 1956. In 1960, he graduated from Harvard Medical School....

, a postdoctoral researcher in Nirenberg's lab, developed a method for determining the genetic code on pieces of tRNA (see Nirenberg and Leder experiment
Nirenberg and Leder experiment
The Nirenberg and Leder experiment was a scientific experiment performed in 1964 by Marshall W. Nirenberg and Philip Leder. The experiment elucidated the triplet nature of the genetic code and allowed the remaining ambiguities codons in the genetic code to be deciphered.In this experiment, using a...

). 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.”

Nirenberg's later research focused on neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

, neural development, and the homeobox

Homeobox

A homeobox is a DNA sequence found within genes that are involved in the regulation of patterns of anatomical development in animals, fungi and plants.- Discovery :...

genes.

Biography

Nirenberg was born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the son of Harry and Minerva Nirenberg. He developed rheumatic fever

Rheumatic fever

Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease that occurs following a Streptococcus pyogenes infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever. Believed to be caused by antibody cross-reactivity that can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain, the illness typically develops two to three weeks after...

as a boy, so the family moved to Orlando, Florida

Orlando, Florida

Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...

to take advantage of the subtropical climate. He developed an early interest in biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

. In 1948 he received his B.S. degree, and in 1952, a master's degree

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

in zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

from the University of Florida

University of Florida

The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

at Gainesville where he was also a member of the Pi Lambda Phi

Pi Lambda Phi

Pi Lambda Phi International Fraternity Inc. is a college social fraternity with 35 active chapters and four colonies in the United States and Canada....

Fraternity

A fraternity is a brotherhood, though the term usually connotes a distinct or formal organization. An organization referred to as a fraternity may be a:*Secret society*Chivalric order*Benefit society*Friendly society*Social club*Trade union...

. His dissertation for the Master's thesis was an ecological and taxonomic study of caddis flies (Trichoptera

Trichoptera

The caddisflies are an order, Trichoptera, of insects with approximately 12,000 described species. Also called sedge-flies or rail-flies, they are small moth-like insects having two pairs of hairy membranous wings...

). He received his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

in biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

from the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

, Ann Arbor in 1957.

He began his postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health

National Institutes of Health

(NIH) in 1957 as a fellow of the American Cancer Society

American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society is the "nationwide community-based voluntary health organization" dedicated, in their own words, "to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and...

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

DNA

, RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

and protein

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 Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood Diseases), where he remained a laboratory chief until his death. He was married in 1961 to Perola Zaltzman, a chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

from the University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

, who also worked at NIH and died in 2001. Nirenberg married Myrna M. Weissman, Ph.D.

Ph.D.

, Professor of Epidemiology

Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...

and Psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, often known as P&S, is a graduate school of Columbia University that is located on the health sciences campus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan...

in 2005. He had four stepchildren: Susan Weissman of Evanston, Illinois

Evanston, Illinois

Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...

, Judith Weissman of New York, New York, Sharon Weissman of New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...

, and Jonathan Weissman of San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

.

Nirenberg was awarded the National Medal of Science

National Medal of Science

The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and...

in 1964 and the National Medal of Honor in 1968 by President

President

A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society

American Philosophical Society

The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...

in 2001. He died on January 15, 2010, from cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

after several months of illness.

Research

Biography

See also

Further reading