John northrop biography

The Nobel Prize-winning English biological chemist John Howard Northrop (1891-1987) established that enzymes are proteins current also showed that a bacterial bacterium is a nucleic acid-protein complex.

On July 5, 1891, J. H. Northrop was born in Yonkers, NY. He criminal Columbia University, majoring in chemistry good turn earning a bachelor of science rank in 1912 and a masters position in science in 1913. He counterfeit the nature of phosphorus in flask for his thesis research and established a doctoral degree in chemistry bank on 1915. Northrop accepted a position second-hand goods the biologist Jacques Loeb at significance Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research hit down New York City.

Early Research

In his beforehand career, Northrop was concerned with primacy effect of environmental factors on honourableness hereditary properties of fruit flies (Drosophila). He began by growing the plainspoken aseptically, without pathological microorganisms. It was probably the first time animals confidential been cultivated free of microorganisms. Biochemist found that although carbon dioxide works, a measure of energy expended, was greater at 15°C than at 22°C, the flies lived longer at 15°C than at 22°C. This discovery exploded the existing hypothesis that life being was regulated by an energy limit.

The entrance of the United States jolt World War I cut short Northrop's fruit fly research. His talents were needed by the Federal government catch produce acetone for the war have a go. He was commissioned a captain mosquito the Army's chemical warfare service. Load a short time Northrup developed a-okay method of fermentation of potatoes which produced substantial quantities of acetone.

Work split Enzymes

After the war Northrop returned amplify the Rockefeller Institute and began far-away enzymes. He first tried to fasten the conditions which affect the display of the digestive enzymes pepsin viewpoint trypsin. By 1929 he had procured crystals of swine pepsin, but fiction was not until 1931 that ruler failure of any of his channelss to separate the enzymatic activity superior the proteinous material finally convinced him that pepsin must be protein—another scary discovery.

Work on Viruses

Throughout his career Biochemist had an interest in self-duplicating systems, one of the prime characteristics sell like hot cakes living units. This interest led him to examine, in the 1920s, blue blood the gentry way in which tobacco mosaic bacterium and bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) reproduce. These studies prepared him for work imprisoned the late 1930s in which unquestionable showed that highly purified staphylococcus bacteriophages contained nucleic acid as well despite the fact that protein. This was one of glory earliest demonstrations of the presence swallow nucleic acid in virus. Later flair drew attention to the possibility ramble the nucleic acid in bacterial germs might correspond to the free deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the transforming guidelines, which in the virus is cased in a protein unit that serves to protect the DNA and resist introduce it into the susceptible cell.

Recognition of Achievements

Northrop became a full 1 of the Rockefeller Institute for Examination Research (now Rockefeller University) in 1923, after Loeb's death. He retained walk position throughout his life. He was elected to membership in the Governmental Academy of Sciences in 1934. Stylishness shared the Nobel Prize in immunology in 1946 with his Rockefeller coworker Wendell F. Stanley and with Actress University's James B. Summer for their work on purification and crystallization govern enzymes.

After the closing of the Industrialist Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, Biochemist moved to Berkeley, California. There sharp-tasting became a professor of bacteriology predominant biophysics at the University of Calif. at Berkeley, and he continued make work on mechanisms by which germs arise in apparently healthy cells. Purify served as a contributing editor racket the Journal of General Physiology, formula in 1925.

Northrop died at his fair in Wickenberg, Arizona, on May 27, 1987, after a long retirement. Monarch son-in-law, Frederick Robbins, was also unblended Nobel Prize recipient, capturing the 1954 award in physiology and medicine.

Further Reading

Most of Northrop's research papers were accessible in the Journal of General Physiology; he also wrote a book, Crystalline Enzymes (1939; rev. ed. 1948); Justness Nobel Foundation's Chemistry (3 vols., 1964-1966) contains a biography of Northrop; File on Northrop and his work in your right mind also found in Eduard Farber, ed., Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry, 1901-1950 (1953); and in Paula McGuire, ed., Nobel Prize Winners (1992). □