Rodney Robert Porter

Rodney Robert Porter ( born October 8, 1917 in Newton -le- Willows, Lancashire, England; † September 7, 1985 in Winchester, Hampshire, England ) was an English biochemist, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS ) and Nobel Prize winner for the chemical structural elucidation of the antibody.

Biography

Rodney R. Porter studied at the University of Liverpool Biochemistry and concluded in 1939 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Ten years later he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral advisor was the Nobel laureate Fred Sanger. Porter worked from 1949 to 1960 at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, before he went as Professor of Immunology at the St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. In 1967 he was Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. In 1972 he received together with Gerald M. Edelman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine " for their discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies ". Other awards were the 1966 Gairdner Foundation International Award, and after the election as a member ( "Fellow" ) of the Royal Society in 1964, the Royal Medal (1973) and Copley Medal (1983). Porter died in 1985 in a car accident at Winchester. With his wife Porter had five children.

Research

Although it was already known that antibodies are composed of proteins, there was no knowledge of the accurate structure. So Porter was originally assumed that antibodies from a single peptide chain exist.

In the years 1958 and 1959 showed that the enzyme papain could cut the antibodies a rabbit in three parts. One of the three parts of crystallized what Porter initially attributed to an artifact. Around the same time Gerald Edelman found that in human antibodies more peptide chains linked together by disulfide bonds.

After this discovery, Porter took the already known reduction of disulfide bonds and received four antibody fragments, two of which are each about 20,000 u and the other two each 50000 u weighed. For further analysis Porter postulated the chemical structure of the antibody.

References

Further Reading

  • R A Kyle, shampoo M A: R. R. Porter -the 4 -chain structure of immunoglobulin G. In: Mayo Clin. Proc .. 75, No. 11, November 2000, p 1110. PMID 11,075,737th
  • : ". The role and Significance of international cooperation in the biomedical sciences" Proceedings of the International Symposium on Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Rodney R. Porter. Washington, DC September 21-23, 1983, In: . Perspect. Biol Med. 29, No. 3 Pt 2. 1986, pp. S1- 229th PMID 3,523,420th
  • PA Small: Rod Porter: his gifts to a young scientist. In: Biosci. Rep.. 5, No. 10-11. 1985, pp. 969-71. doi: 10.1007/BF01119909. PMID 3,913,473th
  • C A Pasternak: Rodney Robert Porter. In: Biosci. Rep.. 5, No. 10-11. 1985, pp. 809-13. doi: 10.1007/BF01119892. PMID 3,913,470th
  • Pasternak, Charles A.: Special issue in memory of Rodney Porter. In: Biosci. Rep.. 5, No. 10-11. 1985, p 809-1014. PMID 3,913,469th
  • Carriers of the Copley Medal
  • Biochemist
  • Nobel Prize for Medicine
  • Support of the Canada Gairdner International Award
  • University teachers (Oxford)
  • Member of the Royal Society
  • Briton
  • English
  • Born 1917
  • Died in 1985
  • Man
Digital Object Identifier
689676
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