(contributed by Vijay Varma)
The pace of progress in molecular biology is
such that the 60s are now considered a classical
period in the history of this rapidly changing
and growing field. One of the principal
scientists of this era is Dr. Har Gobind Khorana.
He shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine and
Physiology in 1968 with Marshall Nirenberg and
Robert Holley for cracking the genetic code. (The
Nobel lecture was delivered on December 12, 1968)
They established that this 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.
Dr. Khorana is also the first to synthesize
oligonucleotides, that is, strings of
nucleotides. These custom designed pieces of
artificial genes are widely used in biology labs
for sequencing, cloning and engineering new
plants and animals. The oligonucleotides, thus,
have become indispensible tools in biotechnology.
Spurred by this demand, Dr. Khorana's invention
has become mechanized and commercialized to such
an extent that now one can fax a genetic sequence
of choice to one of many mail order companies,
and the synthetic gene is shipped in return
mail.
Born in Raipur, in Punjab,
India in 1922, Dr. Khorana received his B.Sc. and
M.Sc. degrees from the Punjab University in
Lahore (in present day Pakistan) and his Ph.D.
from the University of Liverpool, where he went
in 1945 on a Government of India Fellowship. Dr.
Khorana spent a year in Zurich in 1948-49 as a
post-doctoral fellow and returned to India for a
brief period in 1949. He returned to England in
1950 and spent two years at Cambridge. While at
Cambridge, he worked with professors Kenner and
Todd. His interest 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. In
1970 he became the Alfred Sloan Professor of
Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology where he continues his
work.
