 |
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON : Forty-seven
years apart, Arthur and Roger Kornberg got calls
from Stockholm. |
Linda A. Cicero |
On Monday morning, Andrew
Fire was the man of the hour. Camera shutters clicked
and questions flew from Bay Area reporters who wanted
to know more about the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine.
Two days later, photographers
were focused on another professor at the School of Medicine:
Roger Kornberg, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The first week of October,
when the Nobels are announced each year, was a particularly
busy one on the Farm. And everyone was quick to point
out the connections between the laureates’ work. “Andy
Fire’s research dealt with the inhibition of gene expression,” Provost
John Etchemendy, PhD ’82, noted at the press conference
for Kornberg on October 4. “And, of course, before
there’s
inhibition, there has to be a mechanism for expression—the
research Roger Kornberg has been honored for.”
A professor
of pathology and of genetics, Fire was part of a team
of researchers who discovered double-stranded, aberrant
RNA molecules that can turn off specific genes in animal
cells. He and Craig C. Mello of the University of Massachusetts
Medical School, who shares the Nobel prize, co-authored
a paper in Nature in 1998 that explained how they had
replicated the natural on-off mechanism by reproducing the
double-stranded RNA in a test tube and then putting that
material into a cell. The silencing process, called RNA interference,
or RNAi, is today a widely used research tool that has shown
promise in gene therapies for cholesterol management,
HIV, cancer and hepatitis.
Kornberg, PhD ’72, a professor
of structural biology, received the Nobel in chemistry
for his work in understanding how the genetic blueprint
of DNA is converted into the protein-producing instructions
of RNA, a process called transcription. Applications
of his molecular research are found in the design of
antibiotics. An understanding of how transcription goes awry
can help explain birth defects, cancer and other conditions.
 |
PRIZE WORTHY : Fire’s lab
work replicated the natural process of RNA interference. |
Linda A. Cicero |
Kornberg
described the history of his research as “truly
a Stanford story,” which began with his graduate work
in the department of chemistry in 1967. He returned as
a faculty member in 1978 and began research at the Stanford
Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, a division of the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center. It also is a family story.
His father, Arthur Kornberg, a professor emeritus of biochemistry
who was in the audience at the Clark Center auditorium,
received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1959
for studies about how genetic information is transferred
from one DNA molecule to another. And Roger Kornberg noted
that his “closest
collaborator” has
been his wife, Yahli Lorch, associate professor of structural
biology.
Fire’s Stanford history is also long, but interrupted.
He arrived on the Farm on April 27, 1959, when he was
born at Stanford Hospital. He joined the Stanford faculty
in 2003. A longtime researcher at the Carnegie Institution
of Washington, Fire did his undergraduate work in mathematics
across the Bay. “I
applied to only two places for undergraduate training,” he
explained at the press conference. “One of them was
the University of California at Berkeley, and one was
Stanford. And I went to the one place where I got in.”
Both
Nobelists spoke about the importance of basic research
conducted at the university level. The main application of
his Nobel-winning work, Fire said, “hasn’t been
any miraculous new medicine.” Instead, “It’s
been understanding.” |
