Alexander Rich

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Alexander Rich (born November 15, 1924 in Hartford , Connecticut , † April 27, 2015 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American chemist, molecular biologist and biophysicist.

Career

Alexander Rich was the son of Eastern European immigrants. He grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts and studied chemistry and medicine at Harvard University (Bachelor in Biochemistry, 1947), where he also received his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1949 . As a post-doctoral student he was with Linus Pauling at Caltech from 1949 to 1954 , where he learned how to use X-ray crystallography . From 1954 he headed the physical chemistry department at the National Institutes of Health (NIH); In 1955/56 he went to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge , where he and Francis Crick clarified the structure of two proteins - polyglycine II and collagen .

Since 1958 he was Professor of Biophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , since 1974 as William Thompson Sedgwick Professor of Biophysics .

Three years after the discovery of the DNA double helix, Rich and colleagues demonstrated that the three-dimensional structure of RNA can also exist as a double helix. He was the first to perform RNA-DNA hybridizations and was the first to discover DNA in organelles . He determined the three-dimensional structure of the t-RNA .

Rich is the discoverer of polysomes (1963) and Z-DNA (left-handed helix winding instead of the more common B-shape). In 1979, his group at MIT (with Andrew Wang) made a Z-DNA crystal, the first DNA ever made in the form of a single crystal. In 2005 he and his group produced a crystal form of the connection between B and Z DNA (Nature, Volume 437, 2005, p. 1183). Rich was also able to contribute to the biological importance of Z-DNA. In 2003 he discovered that a protein (E3L), which is important for the pathogenicity of the smallpox virus (it prevents cells infected by the virus from destroying themselves), works in a similar way to a protein that binds to Z-DNA. Rich then worked on a drug that works against the smallpox virus.

Rich has signed for over 600 publications (2010).

From 1969 to 1980 he was part of the biology team of the Viking Mars probe. In 1974 he received the Skylab Achievement Award from NASA .

In 1987 he founded the pharmaceutical company Alkermes and was also involved in other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He was on the Scientific Council of US Genomics Inc.

He was an honorary doctor from the Free University of Berlin , the ETH Zurich , the Weizmann Institute and the State University of Rio de Janeiro. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960), the American Philosophical Society (1980), the American Chemical Society , foreign member of the French and Russian Academies of Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine. In 1963 he was a Guggenheim Fellow.

He was also active in disarmament and served on the Council of the Pugwash Conference from 1977 to 1982 . Rich died in Boston on April 27, 2015 at the age of 90.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ F. Crick and A. Rich: Structure of Polyglycine II. In: Nature. Volume 176, 1955, pp. 780–781, doi: 10.1038 / 176780a0 , full text (PDF)
  2. ↑ Wang, GJ Quigley, FJ Kolpak, JL Crawford, JH van Boom, G. Van der Marel, Rich: Molecular structure of a left-handed double helical DNA fragment at atomic resolution , Nature, Volume 282, 1979, p. 680– 686
  3. ↑ YG Kim, M. Muralinath, T. Brandt, M. Pearcy, K. Hauns, K. Lowenhaupt, BL Jacobs, Rich: A role for Z-DNA binding in vaccinia virus pathogenesis , Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, Volume 100, 2003, pp. 6974-6979, Kim, Lowenhaupt, DB Oh, KK Kim, Rich Evidence that vaccinia virulence factor E3L binds to Z-DNA in vivo: Implications for development of a therapy for poxvirus infection , Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, volume 101, 2004, pp. 1514-1518. See Virus researches close on the secret life of DNA , 2003, Arizona State University
  4. ↑ Denise Gellene: Alexander Rich Dies at 90; Confirmed DNA's Double Helix. In: The New York Times, May 5, 2015 (accessed May 6, 2015).
personal data
SURNAME Rich, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American molecular biologist and biophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Hartford , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 2015
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts