Son follows father in winning Nobel for genetics work
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, October 4, 2006
NEW YORK – Nearly a half-century after his father was awarded a Nobel Prize, a Stanford University professor won his own Wednesday for groundbreaking research into how cells read their genes, fundamental work that could help lead to new therapies.
Discoveries by Roger Kornberg, 59, have helped set the stage for developing drugs to fight cancer, heart disease and other illnesses, experts said.
Kornberg said the immediate application of his work is in making better antibiotics for diseases such as tuberculosis. “There will be specific cures for several diseases in the next decade,” he said.
He said several companies are developing drugs based on his research.
Kornberg’s $1.4 million award, following the Nobels for medicine and physics earlier this week, completes the first American sweep of the Nobel science prizes since 1983.
Americans have won or shared in all the chemistry Nobels since 1992.
Kornberg’s father, Arthur, shared the 1959 Nobel medicine prize for studies of how genetic information is transferred.
Arthur Kornberg, now 88, said the details of his son’s work are beyond him, “but I certainly admire it from a distance. … I’ve been waiting for this event for a long time, and I’m just grateful, and so is my family, that I’m still around when it happened.”
The Kornbergs are the sixth father and son to both win Nobel Prizes. One father and daughter – Pierre Curie and Ir Gene Joliot-Curie – won Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, respectively. Marie Curie – Ir Gene’s mother and Pierre’s wife – won two Nobel prizes, for chemistry and physics.
Roger Kornberg’s prize-winning work produced a detailed picture of what scientists call transcription in eukaryotes, the group of organisms that includes humans and other mammals, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its citation.
Transcription lets genes specify what proteins a cell produces. In this process, information from genes is used to create molecules called messenger RNA. These molecules shuttle the information to the cells’ protein-making machinery. Proteins, in turn, serve as building blocks and workhorses of cells, vital to structure and functions.
