Sarah Ratner

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Sarah Ratner (born June 9, 1903 in New York City , † July 28, 1999 there ) was an American biochemist . She made significant contributions to the urea cycle , discovered the amino acid argininosuccinate and the enzymes involved in its formation and conversion in the cycle .

Life

Sarah Ratner was born with her twin brother in New York City in 1903. She was the only daughter of Aaron and Hannah Ratner, née Selzer, and had three other older brothers. Her parents had fled Russia from anti-Semitic persecution and emigrated to the United States at the end of the 19th century . Sarah Ratner grew up and went to school in New York City. Although her parents were initially against an academic education, she was won over by her daughter's acquisition of a scholarship and Sarah Ratner began studying chemistry in 1920 at Cornell University in Ithaca , one of the few universities at the time that was also open to women. She received her bachelor's degree in 1924 and returned to New York City, where she worked for several years in analytical laboratories at Long Island College Hospital and Sloane Hospital for Women , and attended evening classes at Columbia University . In 1927 she completed her master’s degree and was accepted by Hans Thacher Clarke as a PhD student in the Department of Biochemistry of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where she received her PhD in 1936 .

The search for a job as a post-doctoral student in the research area turned out to be difficult for Sarah Ratner due to her gender, as women in their position were usually only employed as teachers at women's colleges. She eventually found a job outside of New York but was unable to keep it for long because her father passed away and she had to look after her mother. In 1937 she was brought back to the Department of Biochemistry at Columbia University by Rudolf Schönheimer and was involved in the first investigations of metabolic processes with deuterium or the nitrogen isotope 15 N-labeled molecules until Schönheimer's suicide in 1941 . From 1942 to 1946 she worked with David E. Green , who had come to Columbia University in 1941 and was mainly concerned with the isolation of enzymes and research into the enzymatic oxidation of amino acids .

In 1946 Sarah Ratner moved to Severo Ochoa at the School of Medicine at New York University , where she became assistant professor of pharmacology . She began her more than 30 years of research on the urea cycle here , which she continued from 1954 at the Public Health Research Institute of the New York City Department of Health until her retirement in 1992. Sarah Ratner showed that the path from citrulline to arginine in the urea cycle was more complex than assumed, led through the then unknown amino acid argininosuccinate and was catalyzed by the enzymes argininosuccinate synthase and argininosuccinate lyase . She isolated the enzymes and studied their molecular structure and how they worked. It also showed that ATP was necessary for the production of argininosuccinate . From 1949 to 1977 her results appeared in fifteen publications in the Journal of Biological Chemistry under the title Biosynthesis of Urea .

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Elizabeth H. Oakes: Encyclopedia of World Scientists. Revised Edition, Facts On File, 2007, ISBN 978-1438118826 , p. 618 f.
  2. ^ Ronald Bentley: Sarah Ratner 1903-1999. In: Biographical Memoirs. Vol. 82, National Academy of Sciences 2003, pp. 221-241, here pp. 222-226.
  3. ^ Ronald Bentley: Sarah Ratner 1903-1999. In: Biographical Memoirs. Vol. 82, National Academy of Sciences 2003, pp. 221-241, here pp. 226-228.
  4. ^ Nicole Kresge, Robert D. Simoni, Robert L. Hill: Four Decades of Research on the Biosynthesis of Urea: the Work of Sarah Ratner. In: The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Vol. 280, No. 37, 2005, pp. 34-36.
  5. ^ Ronald Bentley: Sarah Ratner 1903-1999. In: Biographical Memoirs. Vol. 82, National Academy of Sciences 2003, pp. 221-241, here pp. 228-230.
  6. ^ Book of Members, Chapter R. American Academy of Arts & Sciences, p. 453. Retrieved September 14, 2014.
  7. ↑ Sarah Ratner. National Academy of Sciences, Members. Retrieved September 14, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Ratner, Sarah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1999
Place of death New York City