Frederick Sanger—Winner of 2 Nobel Prizes

Abstract

English biochemist and molecular biologist Frederick Sanger won the Nobel Prize in chemistry twice, the first time in 1958 and again in 1980. The 1958 award was given for his work on the structure of the insulin molecule and the 1980 award for determining the base sequence of nucleic acids. Sanger shared the 1980 prize with Paul Berg (1926-) and Walter Gilbert (1932-). Berg performed fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, particularly recombinant DNA, and Gilbert determined the sequence of bases in DNA by a method applicable to single-and doublestranded DNA. Sanger's work on insulin enabled chemists to synthesize insulin artificially, stimulated research on protein structure, and led to the determination of the structures of many other complex proteins. Frederick Sanger, the son of a physician, was born on August 13, 1918, in Rendcombe, Gloucestershire, in southwestern England. From 1932 to 1936, he attended the Bryanston School in Blandford in Dorset (southern England). In 1936, he entered St John's College, Cambridge University, and graduated in 1939 with a BA degree in natural science. Sanger remained at Cambridge University and in 1943 received a PhD degree in biochemistry for investigating the metabolism of the amino acid lysine. From 1944 to 1951, working as a Beit Memorial Fellow for Medical Research, he investigated the order of amino acids in the protein insulin. In 1951, Sanger joined the staff of the British Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University and remained there until his retire-ment in 1983. In 1962, he was named director of protein and nucleic acid chemistry at the MRC. Sanger worked for 10 years to elucidate the structure of the bovine insulin molecule, and by 1955, he had determined the exact order of all the amino acids of the molecule—the first protein molecule to be known in such detail. He also reported his laboratory technique for determining the order in which amino acids are linked in proteins. Sanger's work made it possible for other chemists to identify the exact structure of other compounds. For example, Chinese American biochemist Choh Hao Li (1913-) and his group were able to determine the structure of the pituitary hormone adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) in 1956, and in the early 1950s, American biochemist Vincent Du Vigneaud (1901-1978) determined the structure of the comparatively simple amino acid chains of 2 pituitary hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, and later synthesized them. In the 1950s, Sanger became interested in genetics and turned his attention to determining the sequence of nucleotides in molecules of DNA and RNA. In 1975, he decoded the DNA of a small virus, for which he received the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The work—complete nucleo-tide (base) sequence of the genetic material (DNA) of the virus—done at the MRC laboratory was published in 1977. Besides the Nobel Prize, Sanger received many other honors, including the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize of the Chemical Society (1951), the Gairdner Foundation Annual Award (1971 and 1979), the William Bate Hardy Prize of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (1976), the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (1977), the Wheland Award (1978), the Horwitz Prize (1979), and the Lasker Award (1979). In1954, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and was named a Companion of Honor in 1981 and a member of the Order of Merit in 1986. In 1963, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was honored on a stamp issued by the Palau Islands in 2000. The stamp features portraits of Sanger and fellow prize winner Walter Gilbert.