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Papers of Marshall Nirenberg Added to Profiles in
Science
Genetics Pioneer Earned 1968 Nobel Prize
As a budding teenage zoologist who frequented the swamps of
Florida to collect insects in the 1940s, Marshall Nirenberg was an
adept observer of plant life, insects, and birds. He captured these
observations through carefully written and maintained notes. It was
a habit that was to serve him well in the future.
 Dr. Marshall
Nirenberg
Forty years ago, in the spring of 1961, Nirenberg embarked upon a
series of experiments that became the foundation for groundbreaking
work on deciphering the genetic code.
"Our contemporary understanding of the genetic code would not
have been possible without the discoveries of Dr. Marshall
Nirenberg, who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Medicine or
Physiology," said Dr. Alexa McCray, who heads the Profiles in
Science project. McCray directs NLM's Lister Hill National Center
for Biomedical Communications.
Dr. Nirenberg is the sixth scientist to be included in NLM's
Profiles in Science website (http://www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov/),
dedicated to the lives and works of prominent 20th century
biomedical scientists. The intent of the website is to have
scientists, scholars, and students appreciate the history, and share
some of the excitement of early scientific discoveries in molecular
biology.
Born April 10, 1927, in New York City, Marshall Nirenberg spent
his teenage years in Orlando, Florida. He received his BS degree in
zoology and chemistry from the University of Florida in Gainesville
in 1948, and earned a PhD in biological chemistry from the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1957. An American Cancer
Society fellowship brought Nirenberg to the National Institutes of
Health. He joined the staff there in 1960 and still maintains a
laboratory in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
In 1959 Nirenberg began his investigations into the relationship
between deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), ribonucleic acid (RNA) and the
production of proteins. With Heinrich J. Matthaei, a young
postdoctoral researcher from Bonn, Germany, Nirenberg initiated a
series of famous experiments using synthetic RNA. These two
researchers were able to show how RNA transcribes genetic "messages"
that are encoded in DNA and translates them so that amino acids know
how, and in which order, to combine to make proteins. Nirenberg had,
in effect, cracked the secrets of the genetic code.
In 1968, Nirenberg received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine "for [the] interpretation of the genetic code and its
function in protein synthesis." He shared the award with Robert W.
Holley of Cornell University and Har Gobind Khorana of the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. This remarkable personal and
scientific accomplishment held great significance, not only for
Nirenberg but also for the history of modern science.
Public response to cracking the genetic code was mixed. In
December 1961, the New York Times reported on Nirenberg's discovery
by explaining "the science of biology has reached a new frontier,"
leading to "a revolution far greater in its potential significance
than the atomic or hydrogen bomb." Others, however, did not share
such enthusiasm. Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius, the 1948 Nobel
Laureate in Chemistry, asserted that this knowledge could "lead to
methods of tampering with life, of creating new diseases, of
controlling minds, of influencing heredity, even perhaps in certain
desired directions." In 1962, Nirenberg half-joked to fellow
scientist Francis Crick, "[T]he American press has been saying that
[my] work may result in (1) the cure of cancer and allied diseases
(2) the cause of cancer and the end of mankind, and (3) a better
knowledge of the molecular structure of God. Well, it's all in a
day's work."
Since the late 1960s, Nirenberg has pursued myriad topics in
neurobiology and neurogenetics, including the development of
neuroblastoma tumor cells, and the expression of genes in the
retinal portion of the eye. At present, he is using advanced digital
scanning technology to study the genetic development of neural
networks in the brains of fruit fly embryos. |
