Zickler Lecture - 1990
DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES
|
Har Gobind Khorana, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate Massachusetts Institute of Technology Light Transduction by Bacteriorhodopsin andVisual Rhodopsin |
About the Speaker
Har Gobind Khorana was born in Punjab , India (now West Pakistan ) in 1922. He received an M. Sc. degree from Punjab University in Lahore and stayed in India until 1945, when he received a fellowship to study for his Ph. D. degree at the University of Liverpool .
After completing a postdoctoral year in Zurich , Khorana returned to England where he conducted research on nucleic acids at the University of Cambridge under Sir Alexander Todd and Dr. G. W. Kenner. From there, he moved to the laboratory of Dr. Gordon M. Shrum in Vancouver , BC , where he initiated his studies on the synthesis of phosphate esters.
In 1960, Khorana joined the University of Wisconsin as Professor of Biochemistry and Co-Director of the Institute of Enzyme Research . He developed the use of carbodiimides as synthetic reagents, which proved invaluable in the synthesis of nucleotides, nucleotide coenzymes, nucleic acids and polypeptides. Using multidisiplinary approaches, he contributed to the elucidation of the genetic code and later synthesized the gene for alanine tRNA. In 1968, he received, together with Robert Holley and Marshall Nirenberg, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for "Interpretation of the Genetic Code and Its Function in Protein Synthesis".
In 1970, Khorana was appointed Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge , US . Making a radical change in his work, he initiated studies of biological membranes and bioenergetics. He elucidated the mechanism of proton transport in light transduction by bacteriorhodopsin in the purple membrane. His current interests lie in the mammalian visual sensory system and G-protein-coupled receptors.
Khorana is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, US and a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He is the receipient of numerous awards, including the Horwitz Prize (1968), Lasker Award (1968) and Gibbs Medal of the American Chemical Society (1974).