Resumen de Roger Kornberg y la RNApol II: El mecanismo de síntesis del ácido ribonucleico desvelado al medio siglo de Severo Ochoa y su polinucleótido fosforilasa
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2006 has been awarded to Prof. Roger Kornberg, Head of the Department of Structural Biology, Stanford CA, USA. Prof. Kornberg has been leading along years an exhaustive and rigorous research effort on RNApol II, the protein complex responsible for the synthesis of messenger RNA in eukaryotic cells. By means of biophysical approaches, X-ray crystallography in particular, his work shows how ten of the twelve protein subunits of the whole enzyme are coordinated in order to melt the two DNA strands, recognize the first ribonucleotide to be incorporated on the template chain to be transcribed and catalyze polymerization of successive nucleotide building blocks with astonishing fidelity and processivity. Nearly half a century after the pioneering in vitro synthesis of RNA by Severo Ochoa, the work now awarded unveils, with a wealth of intimate details, the function of the macromolecular machinery essential for gene expressionÿ
