Har Gobind Khorana was an Indian-born American biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that helped show how nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, they control the cell’s protein synthesis.
Har Gobind Khorana He was born on January 9, 1922, in Raipur, India, to a poor family and attended the University of the Punjab in Lahore, India (now in Pakistan), and the University of Liverpool, England, with government scholarships. He obtained his Ph.D. in Liverpool in 1948.
Research on nucleic acids began during a fellowship at the University of Cambridge (1951) under the direction of Sir Alexander Todd. He obtained fellowships and chairs in Switzerland at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Canada at the University of British Columbia (1952-59), and in the United States at the University of Wisconsin (1960-70). In 1966 Khorana He became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and in 1971 he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he remained until his retirement in 2007.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Khorana he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1968) and the National Medal of Sciences (1987).
In the 1960s, Khorana confirmed Nirenberg’s findings that the way the four different types of nucleotides were arranged in the double helix of the DNA molecule determines the chemical composition and function of a new cell. The 64 possible combinations of nucleotides are read along a DNA strand as required to produce the desired amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Khorana added details about which serial combinations of nucleotides make up specific amino acids. He also proved that the nucleotide code is always transmitted to the cell in groups of three, called codons. Khorana it also determined that some of the codons prompt the cell to start or stop making proteins.
Khorana made another contribution to genetics in 1970, when he and his research team were able to synthesize the first artificial copy of a yeast gene. His subsequent research explored the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular vision pathways in vertebrates. His studies focused primarily on the structure and function of rhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein found in the retina of the vertebrate eye. He also investigated mutations in rhodopsin that are associated with retinitis pigmentosa, which causes night blindness.
Khorana He died on November 9, 2011, at the age of 89, at his home in Concord (Massachusetts), USA.