Career
At the Institute, later Rockefeller University, he worked as an Assistant for Dr. D.W. Woolley on a dinucleotide growth factor he discovered in graduate school and on peptide growth factors that Woolley had discovered earlier. These studies led to the need for peptide synthesis and, eventually, to the idea for solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) in 1959. In 1963, he was sole author of a classic paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in which he reported a method he called solid phase peptide synthesis, which is the fifth most cited paper in the journal's history.
In the mid-60s Dr. Merrifield's laboratory first synthesized bradykinin, angiotensin, desamino-oxytocin and insulin. In 1969, he and his colleague Bernd Gutte announced the first synthesis of the enzyme, ribonuclease A. This work proved the chemical nature of enzymes.
Dr. Merrifield's method greatly stimulated progress in biochemistry, pharmacology and medicine, making possible the systematic exploration of the structural bases of the activities of enzymes, hormones and antibodies. The development and applications of the technique continued to occupy his laboratory, where he remained active at the bench until recently. In 1993, he published his autobiography, "Life during a Golden Age of Peptide Chemistry." He received the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities Award for outstanding contributions to Biomolecular Technologies in 1998.
SPPS was subsequently used to synthesize ribonuclease A (with Bernd Gutte). This achievement was all the more significant in that it demonstrated that the linear sequence of amino acids joined in peptide bonds determined directly the tertiary structure of a peptide or protein. I.e. that information coded in one dimension can directly determine the three dimensional structure of a molecule.
SPPS has been expanded to include solid phase synthesis of nucleotides and saccharides.
Read more about this topic: Robert Bruce Merrifield
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