Punjab
mourns death of Nobel laureate Hargobind Khorana
Punjab
University alumnus, Hargobind Khorana, the biochemist who received
the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine passed away in Concord,
Massachusetts, US, on November 9. He was 89. His daughter Julia
and son Dave survive him. Khorana was born in Raipur village of
West Punjab and did his BSc from Punjab University, Lahore, in
1943, and MSc also from the same university in 1945.
Khorana
was awarded the Government of India Fellowship that enabled him to
go to England where he studied for his PhD at the University of
Liverpool.
In
1970, Khorana became the Alfred Sloan Professor of Biology and
Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he
worked until his retirement in 2007.
He
left the Punjab around Independence, first to the UK, then
Switzerland - where he met and married Esther Elizabeth Sibler,
and then to Canada and the US.
"Gobind
was a brilliant, path-breaking scientist, a wise and considerate
colleague, and a dear friend to many of us at MIT," said
Chris Kaiser, head of the Department of Biology, in an email
announcing the news to his department.
"Khorana
was among the pioneers of the now-familiar series of
three-nucleotide codons that signal to the cell which amino acids
to use in building proteins - for example, uracil-cytosine-uracil,
or UCU, codes for the amino acid serine, while CUC codes for
leucine," said MIT News.
Shortly
after arriving at the Institute, Khorana - along with colleagues -
announced the synthesis of two different genes crucial to protein
building.
And
in a major breakthrough in 1976, they completed the synthesis of
the first fully functional manmade gene in a living cell, said MIT
News.
Marshall
W Nirenberg and Robert W Holley for research that helped to show
how nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of
the cell, control the cell's synthesis of proteins.
Along
with the Nobel, he also received the Gairdner Foundation
International Award, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize and the Albert
Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.
The
other Punjab University alumnus to have received the Nobel Prize
was Abdus Salaam.
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