Laboratory of Molecular Biology - Molecular Biology: 1962-

Molecular Biology: 1962-

During the next decade, molecular biology the world over flourished, the outline bones of the 1950s now having flesh put on them. The detailed 3-D atomic structures of a series of proteins, and how they function, were deduced. These included myoglobin, hemoglobin and chymotrypsin, the last by David Blow. The genetic code, from evidence around the world, was assembled by Crick. Punctuation signals in the messenger RNA — where to start translating the RNA into a protein sequence, and where to stop — were discovered. Crick suggested how the tRNA molecules — his original adaptors — read the messenger in his wobble hypothesis. Sanger devised new methods for sequencing RNA molecules and then later for DNA molecules (for which he received a second Nobel prize in chemistry in 1980). Much later, this line was extended to include determining the sequence of whole genomes, in which John Sulston played a key role. How tRNA precursor molecules are processed to give a functional tRNA was elucidated by John Smith and Sid Altman, and this later led to the discovery of ribozymes. The atomic structure of the first tRNA molecule was solved and zinc fingers discovered by Klug (who received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1982). The structure of the ATP synthase was solved by John E. Walker and Andrew Leslie, for which Walker shared the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1997. The structure of the ribosome was solved by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, for which he shared the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2009.