Sunday 5 August 2012

Name the biologist - week 17

I've been struck by olympics fever so this edition is inspired by it.
Unfortunately, this seems to be another case of "there aren't any pictures of the people involved". Therefore you will have to make do with the ones involved in the process and guess the theme. I'll mention the other biologists when I give you the answer in the next installment. This guy definitely got the ball rolling though.

And this guy was pretty key in coming up with a theory for how it works.
Finally, this guy got to the root or the actual chemistry of how the whole thing works.

What's interesting is how it took a hundred years and research by several different researchers to get to the bottom of how this thing functioned. That's science for you; a long distance relay event.

The answer to the last installment was Frederick Sanger who developed the DNA sequencing method that used dideoxy chain termination. This method is still used to this day and it was instrumental in completing the human genome and Fred himself was one of the first people to complete a genome when he sequenced the virus Phage Φ-X174. In honour of his contribution to sequencing an institute in Hinxton was named after him as the Sanger Institute which is one of the world's leading centres for genomic-based research. He's also one of only a handful of people to have won two Nobel prizes.


2 comments:

  1. Quite confused about von Kölliker...Mitchell and Boyer quite obvious...but von Kölliker??? Is muscle physiology your theme and ATP is there as figuring out an energetic demand?

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  2. You are very close.

    If I were to say I couldn't find a picture of Richard Altmann anywhere would that help? While fishing around some sources claim Kolliker was the first to find them or at least half-noticed them before Altmann named them. That said, Carl Benda was the man but again no pics.

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