The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006
The 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Dr. Roger D. Kornberg “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.”
From the press release:
In order for our bodies to make use of the information stored in the genes, a copy must first be made and transferred to the outer parts of the cells. There it is used as an instruction for protein production – it is the proteins that in their turn actually construct the organism and its function. The copying process is called transcription. Roger Kornberg was the first to create an actual picture of how transcription works at a molecular level in the important group of organisms called eukaryotes (organisms whose cells have a well-defined nucleus). Mammals like ourselves are included in this group, as is ordinary yeast.
Transcription is necessary for all life. This makes the detailed description of the mechanism that Roger Kornberg provides exactly the kind of “most important chemical discovery” referred to by Alfred Nobel in his will.
Just as cool, Dr. Kornberg’s father, Arthur Kornberg, along with Severo Ochoa were awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid”
Roger Kornberg (left), Arthur Kornberg
Other families with more than one Nobel Prize winner via the Times Online:
- Niels Bohr won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922; his son, Aage, in 1975
- Father and son William and Lawrence Bragg shared the 1915 prize in physics
- Marie and Pierre Curie won the 1903 physics prize; their daughter, Irène, shared the chemistry prize with her husband in 1935
- Brothers Jan and Nikolaas Tinbergen won prizes in economics and medicine respectively
Technorati Tags: nobel prize, nobel, chemistry, kornberg, roger kornberg, arthur kornberg, stanford, genetics, genes, dna, transcription
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