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Paul Berg-American Nobel Laureate

Posted on: Saturday, 22 November 2003, 06:00 CST

American biochemist and molecular biologist Paul Berg received the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry for "his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard for recombinant DNA." In addition, he developed the new technology of genetic engineering. Berg shared the Nobel Prize with American chemist Walter Gilbert (1932- ) and English chemist Frederick Sanger (1918- ). Gilbert determined the sequence of bases in DNA by a method applicable to single- and double-stranded DNA, and Sanger determined the base sequence of nucleic acid. Sanger had previously won the 1958 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on the structure of proteins, especially insulin.

Berg was born on June 30, 1926, in New York City. He received his secondary education at Abraham Lincoln High School and graduated in 1943. He entered Pennsylvania State University in University Park, but his education was interrupted for service in the US Navy from 1944 to 1946. After his discharge from the navy, he returned to Pennsylvania State University and graduated with a BS degree in biochemistry in 1948. Berg was a graduate student at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland, Ohio, and received a PhD degree in 1952.

Berg spent 2 years (1952-1953) as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Cytophysiology in Copenhagen, Denmark. After he returned from Denmark, he worked for 1 year with 1959 Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg (1918- ) at Washington University in St Louis, Mo. While working with Kornberg, Berg became familiar with the chemistry of DNA and RNA. He became an assistant professor of microbiology and remained at Washington University until 1959.

In 1959, Berg left St Louis to become an associate professor at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. In 1969, he was named chair of the biochemistry department. While at Stanford University, Berg became interested in the role of transfer RNA (tRNA), a substance that delivers amino acids to the proper position during protein assembly.

Berg elucidated the role of tRNA in protein assembly by purifying many of the different tRNAs and the enzymes that link them to the correct amino acids. Berg took a sabbatical leave to work at the Salk Institute (La Jolla, Calif) with Italian virologist Renata Dulbecco (1914- ), another Nobel laureate (1975 prize in physiology or medicine). His aim was to determine whether a method could be devised to examine and manipulate the complicated genes of multicellular organisms, including those of the human body.

In 1968, Berg returned to Stanford University to begin his research on the genes of a monkey tumor virus. He began his first experiments on recombinant DNA about 1970. During the course of studying the action of isolated genes, he developed methods for splitting DNA molecules at selected sites and attaching segments of the molecules to the DNA of a virus or plasmid, which could enter bacterial or animal cells. The foreign DNA was incorporated with the host and caused the synthesis of proteins not ordinarily found there. The techniques that Berg and his colleagues developed enabled researchers not only to manipulate genes to create new pharmaceuticals, such as Interferon and growth hormones, but also to study the molecular biology of more complicated organisms in detail.

Berg has received many honors and awards in addition to the Nobel Prize. He was honored on a stamp issued by the Pacific islands of Palau in 2000.

Marc A. Shampo, PhD, and Robert A. Kyle, MD

Copyright Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research Nov 2003

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