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Roger Kornberg, professor of Structural Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, is the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in understanding how DNA is converted into RNA, a process known as transcription.
A key step in gene expression is the transcription of the DNA sequences, comprising the genes, into a message that can be read by the ribosome to produce proteins. Transcription is the first step and a key control point in this process, with RNA polymerase at the heart of the molecular transcription mechanism. Kornberg’s studies have provided an understanding at the atomic level of how the process of transcription occurs and also how it is controlled. As transcriptional regulation underlies all aspects of cellular metabolism, his work also helps explain how the process sometimes goes awry, leading to birth defects, cancer and other diseases.
Key to this understanding has been the determination of the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms in the RNA polymerase - in its “base” structure and caught in snapshots of it in action - through the use of synchrotron radiation-based macromolecular crystallography. Kornberg and his group carried out a significant part of this research at SSRL’s macromolecular crystallography beam lines, in particular BL9-2 and BL11-1, starting as early as in 1991 but with the main work leading to the first published structure in the late 1990s. Some of the results have been previously highlighted in SSRL Headlines 2001 and again in 2004.
The SSRL Structural Molecular Biology Program and the beam lines on which much of the crystallography work was performed are supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources and National Institutes of General Medical Sciences and by the Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. SSRL operations is supported by the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Science.
Read the full press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences here, including the “Information to the Public” and the “Advanced Information”.