- Chinese name
- Arthur Kornberg
- Foreign name
- Arthur Kornberg
- date of birth
- March 3, 1918
- Date of death
- October 26, 2007
- University one is graduated from
- City College of New York
- Key achievements
- The nobel prize in physiology and medicine
He was brilliant since he was young. He had three grade jumps in primary and secondary education, and still achieved excellent results. Entered in 1942 National Institutes of Health Do research work. In 1947, he established the enzymology laboratory and served as the director. From 1953 to 1959, he applied for the position of professor in the Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, Washington University. In 1959, he founded Stanford University School of Medicine He has served as a professor in the Department of Biochemistry since then. He is Academician of the American Academy of Sciences Member of the Royal Society. For more than half a century, he has been active in the field of biochemistry research, and was elected president of the American Biochemical Society in 1965 molecular genetics , gene cloning, gene sequencing, gene diagnosis, genome project and other major issues of modern genetics have played a vital role. Koenberg's most remarkable research work was to prove DNA replication and isolate the enzymes needed for replication by experiments in the mid-1950s, which was mainly reflected in his famous paper "Enzymatic Synthesis of Deoxyribonucleic Acid" published in 1956, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1959.
Before 1953, the material nature of genes had been a problem that puzzled biologists all over the world. On April 25, 1953, Nature magazine published J. Watson and F. Crick's DNA double helix structure model , which reflects DNA molecule The possible infinite diversity can immediately put forward the possible mechanism of DNA molecular self replication, which makes biologists suddenly accept that the material nature of genes is DNA. However, although the DNA double helix structure model is based on many experimental results, it has yet to be proved by experiments. In particular, is DNA really a self replicating molecule?? After the publication of the double helix structure model of DNA, Koenberg took this model as the basis of his assumption and used experimental methods to study DNA replication. He soon succeeded and published preliminary results in 1956. One of the reasons for his success is that he has a correct analysis: he thinks that although the monomer that constitutes the DNA molecule is four kinds of deoxyribonucleoside monophosphate, the raw material for DNA synthesis is not four kinds of deoxyribonucleoside monophosphate, but four kinds of deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate. The absence of one of the four deoxynucleoside triphosphates will not work, nor will the use of four deoxynucleoside diphosphates or four deoxynucleoside monophosphates. He also imagined that there must be enzymes in the cell needed to synthesize DNA. So he put Escherichia coli Grind it and add 4 kinds of deoxynucleoside triphosphate (at least one of them radio isotope Mark, so as to check the experimental results), and add a little bit of DNA as the "template" (such as calf thymus DNA, Escherichia coli DNA and Escherichia coli T2 phage DNA）。 The above mixed solution was left at 37 ℃ for 30min in the presence of magnesium ions, and it was found that radioactive markers had entered the DNA part, indicating that there were newly synthesized DNA molecules. The newly synthesized DNA molecule, namely the experimental product, can be separated from the deoxynucleoside triphosphate monomer as the raw material by the perchloride precipitation method. Koenberg measured the base composition of the product DNA and found that they were strikingly similar to the composition of their respective template DNA, which fully proved that the specificity of the newly synthesized DNA was determined by the small amount of template DNA added, but the number was greatly increased. DNA is indeed a self replicating molecule! Koenberg's main monographs are: DNA Synthesis (1974); DNA Replication (1980); DNA Replication Supplement (1982); DNA Replication - 2nd Edition (1992); Gold Spiral: An Exploratory Road into Biotechnology (1995). In 1989, he published his autobiography For the Love of Enzymes: A Life long Exploration of a Biochemist.?
Koenberg married Sylvy Ruth Levy in 1943 and had three children. The eldest son Roger David Kornberg (1947 -), a professor of structural biology at Stanford University, played a key role in establishing the nucleosome model of the basic structure of chromatin. The second son, Thomas Bill Kornberg (1948 -), is a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. The youngest son Kenneth Andrew Kornberg (1950 -) is an architect specializing in laboratory design. Mrs Sylvie died in 1986. Koenberg married Charlene Walsh Levering in 1988. Mrs. Charlene died in 1995. He married Carolyn Frey Dixon in 1998. Koenberg settled in Portala Valley, California, USA. He likes tennis, travel, music, and time with his family.
