Chemistry Khorana, Har Gobind Khorana, Har Gobind (January 9, 1922 - ; India) Har Gobind Khorana is a noted Indian-born American biochemist who along with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley, both American, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for their research which showed that the synthesis of proteins was actually controlled by the genetic components of the cell's nucleus. Born in Raipur, India, Khorana received his formal education through government scholarships first at Punjab University at Lahore and then at the University of Liverpool where in 1948 Khorana received his Ph.D. Following the completion of his education, Khorana held both fellowships and professorships at such institutions as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland as well as at the University of British Columbia in Canada and the University of Wisconsin in the United States from 1952-1959. It was during one of his fellowships at the University of Cambridge in 1951, that Khorana began his research on nucleic acids under Sir Alexander Todd. During the early part of the 1960's, Khorana was able to synthesize the already known structure of nucleic acid molecules. These synthesized nucleic acids were then able to synthesize proteins just as if they were in the cell. From his research, Khorana was able to determine what parts of the nucleic acid were responsible for codes for protein synthesis. In 1970, Khorana was the first to synthesize a copy of the yeast gene (Britannica, 6:840, 1994 and Barba p. 65, 1995). | |
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