Marshall Warren Nirenberg
Marshall Warren Nirenberg
Born	April 10, 1927 (age 81)
Nationality	U.S.
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Known for	genetic code
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968

Marshall Warren Nirenberg (born April 10, 1927) is a U.S. biochemist and geneticist. He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for describing the genetic code and 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.

[edit] 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).^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]}

Nirenberg 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, cytosine repeats (CCC) produced proline and guanine repeats (GGG) produced glycine. 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.

Nirenberg's later research focused on neuroscience, neural development, and the homeobox genes.

[edit] 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. 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 1960 became a research biochemist at the NIH. In 1959 he 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. He was married in 1961 to Perola Zaltzman, a chemist from the University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro.

Nirenberg was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1966 and the National Medal of Honor in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2001.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Leder, P; Nirenberg, M W (1964), "RNA Codewords and Protein Synthesis, 3. On the Nucleotide Sequence of a Cysteine and a Leucine RNA Codeword.", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 52: 1521–1529, 1964 December, doi:10.1073/pnas.52.6.1521, PMID 14243527, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/52/6/1521 
2. ^ Eiserling, F; Levin, J G; Byrne, R; Karlsson, U (1964), "Polyribosomes and DNA-dependent Amino Acid Incorporation in Escherichia coli Extracts.", Journal of Molecular Biology 10: 536–40, 1964 December, doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(64)80073-5, PMID 14257696 
3. ^ 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 
4. ^ 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: 479–84, 1965 Jan 29, doi:10.1126/science.147.3657.479, PMID 14237203 
5. ^ TRUPIN, J S; ROTTMAN, F M; BRIMACOMBE, R L; LEDER, P (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: 807–11, 1965 Apr, doi:10.1073/pnas.53.4.807, PMID 14324538 
6. ^ 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 
7. ^ 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, PMID 5327071 

[edit] 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." [1]

[edit] Further reading

• Nobel Biography
• NIH Profiles in Science
• Free to View Video Interview with Marshall W. Nirenberg provided by the Vega Science Trust.
• 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?"