Har Gobind Khorana: Know the Nobel Laureate scientist who decoded DNA

NewsBharati    09-Jan-2018
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Mumbai, January 9: Nowadays in Biological Sciences we all read about DNA but we don’t know the man who decoded the mystery of DNA. If you know how DNA is shaping you, you should definitely owe thanks to the Indian American Biochemist Har Gobind Khorana. A small village boy from Punjab won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for unfolding the story of DNA.

The great scientist Khorana shared his Nobel Prize in medicine with Robert Holley and Marshall Nirenberg. They were awarded for discovering that the order of nucleotides in DNA determines which amino acids are built or to quote exact words from Noble committee "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis". Though in 1950’s it was established that genetic information is transferred from DNA to RNA, to protein, the genetic code was not cracked. Har Gobind Khorana made important contributions to this field by building different RNA chains with the help of enzymes. Using these enzymes, he was able to produce proteins. The amino acid sequences of these proteins then solved the rest of the puzzle.

Although Khorana belonged to a poor family, his father was dedicated to educating his children and they were practically the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people. He received his Master’s degree in 1945 from Punjab University in Lahore. He studied for a Ph. D. degree at the University of Liverpool with a government fellowship.

The motivation to work for interesting phosphate esters and nucleic acids he gained when he was working in the University of British Columbia. Khorana was also recognised for the construction of the first artificial gene which definitely contributed to the modern biotechnology sector.

Har Gobind Khorana Biology DNA Nobel Laureate