Reiji Okazaki

Reiji Okazaki (Japanese冈 崎 令 治Okazaki Reiji, born October 8, 1930 in Shiratori (now Shiratori, Naka -ku ), Hiroshima; † August 1, 1975 ) was a Japanese molecular biologist and is regarded, along with his wife Tsuneko, as the discoverer named after them Okazaki fragments. Both provided an important contribution to the deciphering of the mechanism of replication of DNA.

Life

Reiji Okazaki completed his studies in 1953 at the University of Nagoya. There he met Tsuneko whom he married in May 1956. At his alma mater, he worked as a professor in 1963. He died of leukemia, possibly caused by the radiation of the Nagasaki atomic bomb dropped on 1945, where he was staying at the time.

The discovery in 1968 of the fragments managed by the use of radioactive nucleotides, for a short period of replication. The strands were then separated and the labeled, newly formed strands isolated. It was noticeable that a single long strand and many small (about 1,000 nucleotides long ) were created pieces. Thus, it was proved that can be directly added to a strand of the replication fork, while the other is due supplemented by the directional sense of the enzymes involved in small pieces and is connected at the end by a ligase to form a continuous strand. A distinction is then continuous from the discontinuous strand.

It was in 1970 awarded the Asahi Prize.

• Molecular Biologist
• Geneticist
• University teachers ( Nagoya University )
• Japanese
• Born in 1930
• Died in 1975
• Man