JERUSALEM: Nobel chemistry prize laureate Roger Kornberg meets scholars

Nobel chemistry prize laureate Roger Kornberg met Israeli scholars in Jerusalem on Sunday (October 15, 2006) and expressed his gratitude for the award, while also saying it wouldn't have been possible without the collaboration of his colleagues. "I think that it was virtually impossible for any committee to allocate credit in an appropriate way and I view the identification of that discovery really as more of a symbol and as it were an icon, representative of the work of everyone in the field over the years and I therefore stand merely as the representative of all the many people who have laboured so hard and ultimately so successfully over the years in this area," he told a press conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Kornberg, a professor at Stanford University, won the prize for showing how cells copy genes, a process essential to how cells develop and therefore to life itself. The Swedish Academy of Sciences, which makes the 10 million crowns (1.36$ million) award, said Kornberg's research into how ribonucleic acid, RNA, moves genetic information around the body was of "fundamental medical importance". Kornberg, whose father also was awarded a Nobel prize for his work on genes 47 years ago, said there was still much more to learn in the field of study for which he was honoured on October 4th. "I think even non scientists will realise that what we have really accomplished is just the beginning of what we hope to do, and we look forward, my colleagues everywhere, really to accomplishing much more in the future to really understand what we aimed to do in the first place," he said. The scientist, whose work shows how DNA - which carries the genetic code in all living organisms, including humans - is "read" by RNA and converted unto an actual protein within a cell, said he had received plaudits from friends and colleagues the world over in the wake of the Nobel announcement. "In the first place I was astonished, such a thing never expected. In the second place I was gratified by the joy it gave others, I could immediately see the people around me were very happy. My friends from around the world, more than thousand of them have written to me even in the first hours all expressed joy and what can I do but share their pleasure," Kornberg told Reuters after the news conference. Kornberg's research could help scientists understand fatal illnesses, including cancer and heart disease and move stem cell research forward, according to the citation of the Swedish academy. His father, Arthur, was awarded a Nobel prize in 1959 for studies into how genetic information is ferried from one DNA molecule to another. The Kornbergs are the sixth set of father and son laureates.

ITN Source | October 16, 2006

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