Reiji Okazaki

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Reiji Okazaki ( Japanese 岡 崎 令 治 , Okazaki Reiji ; born October 8, 1930 in Shiratori (today: Shiratori, Naka-ku ), Hiroshima ; † August 1, 1975 ) was a Japanese molecular biologist and, together with his wife Tsuneko , is as the discoverer of the Okazaki fragments named after them . Both made an important contribution to deciphering the replication mechanism of DNA .

Life

Reiji Okazaki graduated from Nagoya University in 1953 . There he met Tsuneko whom he married in May 1956. From 1963 he was a professor at his alma mater. He died of leukemia , possibly caused by radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 , where he was at the time.

The fragments were discovered in 1968 through the use of radioactive nucleotides for a short period of replication . The strands were then separated and the labeled, newly formed strands isolated. It was noticeable that a single long strand and many small (approx. 1,000 nucleotide long) pieces were created. It was thus proven that one strand of the replication fork can be supplemented directly, while the other, depending on the sense of direction of the enzymes involved, is supplemented in small pieces and is only connected to a continuous strand at the end by a ligase . A distinction is then made between continuous and discontinuous strand.

He was awarded the Asahi Prize in 1970.

literature

  • R. Okazaki, T. Okazaki, K. Sakabe, K. Sugimoto, A. Sugino: Mechanism of DNA chain growth. I. Possible discontinuity and unusual secondary structure of newly synthesized chains. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 59 , no. 2 , February 1968, p. 598–605 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.59.2.598 , PMC 224714 (free full text).
  • K Sugimoto, T Okazaki, R Okazaki: Mechanism of DNA chain growth, II. Accumulation of newly synthesized short chains in E. coli infected with ligase-defective T4 phages. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . tape 60 , no. 4 , August 1968, p. 1356-1362 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.60.4.1356 , PMC 224926 (free full text).
  • Kazunori Sugimoto, Tuneko Okazaki, Yasuo Imae, Reiji Okazaki: Mechanism of Dna Chain Growth, III. Equal Annealing of T4 Nascent Short Dna Chains with the Separated Complementary Strands of the Phage Dna . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 63 , no. 4 , August 1969, p. 1343-1350 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.63.4.1343 , PMC 223470 (free full text).
  • Tuneko Okazaki, Reiji Okazaki: Mechanism of Dna Chain Growth, Iv. Direction of Synthesis of T4 Short Dna Chains as Revealed by Exonucleolytic Degradation . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 64 , no. 4 , December 1969, p. 1242–1248 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.64.4.1242 , PMC 223275 (free full text).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arthur Kornberg: For the Love of Enzymes: The Odyssey of a Biochemist . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1991, ISBN 978-0-674-30776-6 , pp. 223 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Okazaki, Reiji
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 岡 崎 令 治 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese biologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Shiratori (today: Shiratori, Naka-ku ), Hiroshima , Japan
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1975