Paul D. Boyer

Paul Delos Boyer ( born July 31, 1918 in Provo, Utah) is an American biochemist who was awarded in 1997 together with John Ernest Walker and Jens Christian Skou for his work on the adenosine triphosphate ( ATP ) with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Biography

Paul Delos Boyer was born in 1918 in the city of Provo in the U.S. state of Utah. His biochemistry He graduated from Brigham Young University, then a research assistant joined the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Here he received his doctorate in 1943.

From 1956 to 1963 he was Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, after which he joined in 1963 as a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he remained until his retirement in 1989.

Work

Like his colleagues and Skou Walker Paul Delos Boyer mainly dealt with enzymes that catalyze the work of adenosine triphosphate, the main energy suppliers in the metabolism of the organisms. Walker and it focused primarily on the synthesis of ATP by the enzyme ATP synthase. This creates in the adenosine diphosphate (ADP ) and a further molecule of the ATP phosphate by two binds them together. Boyer already showed in the 1950's, that this process, especially when the enzyme activity and the release of the ATP binding energy instead of previously assumed by the binding of ADP to the phosphate.

In the 1980s, Boyer presented a model of how the ATP could be formed via the ATP synthase. As a basis biochemical analysis data ministered to him. The correctness of the model was confirmed by Walker analyzes the structure of the enzyme. Both delivered accordingly essential basis for understanding of energy metabolism in living cells.