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Har Gobind Khorana

Har Gobind Khorana
Born	January 9 1922 (1922-01-09) (age 90) Raipur, Multan, Punjab, British India
Residence	U.S.
Nationality	U.S.
Field	Molecular Biology
Institutions	MIT(1970 - ) University of Wisconsin, Madison(1960-70) University of British Columbia(1952-60) Cambridge University(1950-52) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (1948-49)
Alma mater	University of Liverpool(Ph.D.) University of the Punjab, Lahore(B.S.)(M.S.)
Known for	First to demonstrate the role of Nucleotides in protein synthesis
Notable prizes	Nobel Prize in Medicine (1968)
Religious stance	Hindu

Har Gobind Khorana (born January 9, 1922) is an American molecular biologist born of Punjabi heritage in British India. He was awarded the Nobel prize (shared with Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg) in 1968 for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1966. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States serving on the MIT Chemistry faculty.

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Early life and Education

Khorana was born in Raipur, Kabir Wala, Multan, a poor village in Pakistan. His father was the village "patwari", or taxation official. He was homeschooled by his father, and he later attended D.A.V. Multan High School. He finished his B.Sc. from Punjab University, Lahore in 1943 and M.Sc from Punjab University in 1945. In 1945, he began studies at the University of Liverpool. After earning a PhD in 1948, he continued his postdoctoral studies in Zürich (1948-49). Subsequently, he spent two years at Cambridge and his interests in proteins and nucleic acids took root at that time. In 1952 he went to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and in 1960 moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1970 Dr. Khorana became the Alfred Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he continues to work.

Family

Khorana was married in 1952 to Esther Elizabeth Sibler, who is of Swiss origin. They have three children: Julia Elizabeth (born May 4th, 1953), Emily Anne (born October 18th, 1954), and Dave Roy (born July 26th, 1958).

Khorana’s work & Nobel Prize

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) with two repeating units (UCUCUCU → UCU CUC UCU) produced two alternating amino acids. This, combined with the Nirenberg and Leder experiment, showed that UCU codes for Serine and CUC codes for Leucine.

RNAs with three repeating units (UACUACUA → UAC UAC UAC, or ACU ACU ACU, or CUA CUA CUA) produced three different strings of amino acids.

RNAs with four repeating units including UAG, UAA, or UGA, produced only dipeptides and tripeptides thus revealing that UAG, UAA and UGA are stop codons.

With this, Dr. Khorana and his team had established that the mother of all codes, the biological language common to all living organisms, is spelled out in three-letter words: each set of three nucleotides codes for a specific amino acid. Their Nobel lecture was delivered on December 12, 1968. Dr. Khorana was also the first to synthesize oligonucleotides, that is, strings of nucleotides. He was the first to isolate DNA ligase, an enzyme that links pieces of DNA together. These custom-designed pieces of artificial genes are widely used in biology labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and animals. This invention of Dr. Khorana has become automated and commercialized so that anyone now can order a synthetic gene from any of a number of companies-- one merely needs to fax the genetic sequence to one of the companies to receive an oligonucliotide with the desired sequence.

Awards

Lasker Award, 1967
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize 1968
Nobel Prize for Medicine 1968
National Medal of Science 1987

Trivia

Dr. Khorana is very famous in his native Punjab and a short story about his early career is taught widely at the high school level. It details his efforts to find a teaching or research job in Punjab after getting his Ph.D. and how he was unable to find a job despite his excellent credentials since he did not have political "pull" needed for such jobs. The story ends in a sentence that is now legendary in Punjab : "Mr. Khorana, the job was yours and we were about to sign the offer letter but then the Minister called and recommended his nephew and....". Dr. Khorana returned to Liverpool shortly thereafter and never returned to work in Punjab.

References

The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

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Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine

Max Theiler (1951) • Selman Waksman (1952) • Hans Krebs / Fritz Lipmann (1953) • John Enders / Thomas Weller / Frederick Robbins (1954) • Hugo Theorell (1955) • André Cournand / Werner Forssmann / Dickinson W. Richards (1956) • Daniel Bovet (1957) • George Beadle / Edward Tatum / Joshua Lederberg (1958) • Severo Ochoa / Arthur Kornberg (1959) • Frank Burnet / Peter Medawar (1960) • Georg von Békésy (1961) • Francis Crick / James D. Watson / Maurice Wilkins (1962) • John Eccles / Alan Hodgkin / Andrew Huxley (1963) • Konrad Bloch / Feodor Lynen (1964) • François Jacob / André Lwoff / Jacques Monod (1965) • Francis Rous / Charles B. Huggins (1966) • Ragnar Granit / Haldan Hartline / George Wald (1967) • Robert W. Holley / Har Khorana / Marshall Nirenberg (1968) • Max Delbrück / Alfred Hershey / Salvador Luria (1969) • Bernard Katz / Ulf von Euler / Julius Axelrod (1970) • Earl Sutherland Jr. (1971) • Gerald Edelman / Rodney Porter (1972) • Karl von Frisch / Konrad Lorenz / Nikolaas Tinbergen (1973) • Albert Claude / Christian de Duve / George Palade (1974) • David Baltimore / Renato Dulbecco / Howard Temin (1975)

Complete roster | (1901-1925) | (1926-1950) | (1951-1975) | (1976-2000) | (2001-2025)

Persondata
NAME	Khorana, Har Gobind
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Indian-American molecular biologist
DATE OF BIRTH	January 91922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Raipur,Punjab,British India
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

Category: Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Har_Gobind_Khorana". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.