Jens Christian Skou

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Jens Christian Skou, 2008

Jens Christian Skou (born October 8, 1918 in Lemvig ; † May 28, 2018 in Risskov near Aarhus ) was a Danish physician and biophysicist . Together with John Ernest Walker and Paul Delos Boyer, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997 for his work on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and the discovery of the sodium-potassium ion pump .

Life

Jens Christian Skou was born on October 5, 1918 as the eldest child of the Magnus Martines Skou family and his wife Ane-Margarethe Skou in Lemvig in West Jutland . His father ran his own company in the wood and coal trade. Jens Christian attended elementary school in Lemvig and then switched to grammar school in Haslev in 1933. His favorite subjects were science and mathematics. He was very interested in sports and scouting with enthusiasm. When he took his Abitur exams in 1937, he still had no clear ideas about his future career. During the holidays after graduating from school, he met a medical student while playing tennis, who inspired him to become a doctor. At the end of August he decided to study medicine and started studying medicine at the university just two days later. He studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen and graduated with a master's degree in 1944. He then practiced in the clinics in Hjørring and Aarhus in order to deepen his medical training . During this time he was already working on his dissertation on the numbing and toxic mechanisms of action of local anesthesia. From 1947 to 1954 he was an assistant professor at the Institute for Physiology at the University of Aarhus . In order to be financially more independent, he also worked as an emergency doctor from 1949. He completed his doctorate in 1954 at the same institute. From 1954 to 1963 he was Associate Professor at the Institute of Physiology at Aarhus University . In the 1950s, he was looking for an enzyme in the cell membrane that breaks down ATP. In doing so, Skou came across a transport enzyme that transports substances through the cell membrane and at the same time uses ATP. He called this substance potassium-sodium-ATPase. Later he was able to prove that during these transport processes ATP is broken down enzymatically and is broken down into adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and a phosphate ion during this process. Since the 1960s, Jens Christian Skou has built up his contacts with other international medical science and research institutions by attending congresses and participating in international science forums. In 1963 he was appointed professor of physiology at the same university. He continued this international collaboration in the 1970s and concentrated even more intensely on topics related to the sodium-potassium-ATPase complex. He commissioned further researchers with partial investigations and led a research team on this complex of topics. In 1973 he took part in an international meeting of specialists from this research complex in New York. In 1977 the chair of biophysics was established at Aarhus University, which Skou was in charge of until his retirement in 1988. After that he was now more intensely concerned with the investigation of kinetic models for the overall reaction of the sodium-potassium pump, without the additional burdens of the management and teaching activities.

During his own hospital stay, he met his future wife, Ellen Margarethe Nielsen, who trained as a nurse on this ward. After completing this education, they married in 1948. Their first daughter was born in 1950, but because of a serious illness, she only lived 1½ years. The marriage resulted in two further daughters, Hanne (born 1952) and Karen (born 1954). In 1957 the family bought a house in Risskov, near Aarhus, and built the center of their lives there.

From 1977 he was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , since 2008 the National Academy of Sciences. In 1988 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences ( Foreign Associate ) and in 1999 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1993 he was a full member of the Academia Europaea .

plant

Like his colleagues Boyer and Walker, Jens Christian Skou was primarily concerned with enzymes that catalyze the work of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy supplier in the metabolism of organisms. He mainly focused on the breakdown of ATP, while Boyer and Walker dealt with the synthesis of ATP by the enzyme ATP synthase .

As early as the 1950s, Skou was looking for an enzyme in the cell membrane of nerve cells that breaks down ATP. In doing so, he came across a transport enzyme that transports substances through the cell membrane and consumes ATP in the process. He named it potassium-sodium-ATPase because it transported the ions of potassium and sodium and in this way ensures a stable resting membrane potential of the cells. He was able to show that during these transport processes ATP is broken down enzymatically and broken down into adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and a phosphate ion.

In 1997 he and the researchers John Ernest Walker (Great Britain) and Paul Delos Boyer (USA) received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the “sodium-potassium pump” . Jens Christian Skou mainly researched the degradation of the ATP. He discovered that there is a concentration gradient between the cell interior and the exterior, which is necessary for many processes in the cell. However, sodium ions constantly diffuse into the interior of the cell, which in the long term would lead to an equalization of tension between the cell interior and the exterior. With the same voltage between inside and outside, however, the transmission of an electrical stimulus is impossible. The sodium-potassium pump maintains the concentration gradient between the interior and exterior. The enzyme (Na + / Ka + -ATPase), according to his discovery, enables the transport of three positively charged sodium ions out of the cell and two positively charged potassium ions into the cell, thus ensuring the different distribution. In this process, ATP is broken down into adenosine diphosphate and phosphate.

Skou isolated the enzyme from the nerve cell membranes of crabs. Through his research, he clarified the fundamentals of the enzyme mechanism. This mechanism is important to maintain cell volumes. Defects in the sodium-potassium pump can be the cause of epilepsy.

literature

Web links

Commons : Jens Christian Skou  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry by Jens Christian Skou (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 22, 2016.
  2. ^ Membership directory: Jens Christian Skou. Academia Europaea, accessed on August 23, 2017 (English, with biographical and other information).
personal data
SURNAME Skou, Jens Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish biophysicist and physician and Nobel Prize winner for chemistry (1997)
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Lemvig , West Jutland
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 2018
Place of death Risskov near Aarhus