In Memoriam
Sidney AltmanSidney Altman, Sterling professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) at Yale who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 for discovering the catalytic properties of RNA, died on April 5 in Rockleigh, New Jersey, after a long illness. He was 82. Altman shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Professor Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The two worked independently, but their research reached the same conclusion. Their discovery came as a surprise to the scientific community. It had long been believed that all enzymes — the molecules that catalyze chemical reactions — are proteins. Altman and Cech demonstrated that RNA can also function as an enzyme. Altman first made this discovery in 1978 by studying an enzyme taken from the E. coli bacteria which was a combination of a protein and RNA. He found that the enzyme lost its ability to function if the RNA was removed from the protein. Later, he also succeeded in proving that RNA alone had the same ability to function as the intact enzyme. These discoveries opened many new avenues for further research, including investigations into the origins of life. To read more, click here. |
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