Sidney W. Fox

Sidney W. Fox ( born March 24, 1912 in Los Angeles, † 10 August 1998) was an American biochemist who self- production (car synthesis) of minimal cell lines ( protocells ) discovered.

Education and early career

Fox completed his chemistry studies at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA). After a short work as a technician for Max Bergmann at the Rockefeller Institute and UCLA, he returned to California to study for a doctorate at Caltech. During his studies at Caltech Fox worked with Hugh Huffman, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and as a post-doctoral researcher at the Linus Pauling.

During the Second World War, Fox took part in the attempt to isolate vitamin A from shark liver; the product should improve the night vision of pilots. In 1941, he founded a protein chemistry laboratory at the University of Michigan Medical School; In 1942 he examined fish meal proteins for a company in Oakland.

Professor

1943 Fox received his first academic position at Iowa State College. 1955 Fox took over the directorship of the Oceanographic Institute at Florida State University. Shortly thereafter he published - with Joseph Foster - his first textbook. Starting in 1964, Fox served as director of the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution ( IMCE ) at the University of Miami. During his time his lab has been carrying out studies on the first moon rocks brought back by the Apollo mission, entrusted. After more than three decades in Florida Fox moved in 1989 to the Southern Illinois University and in 1993 at the University of South Alabama.

Microspheres

Sidney Fox's most well-known research emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, when he studied spontaneous changes in protein structures. His early work shows that amino acids under certain conditions spontaneous small polypeptides - can form - the first step on the way to the formation of large proteins. The result was significant because his experimental conditions resembled other conditions that could have possibly exists in the earth's history.

Further work showed that these amino acids and small peptides could be stimulated to form closed spherical membranes, called microspheres. Fox went so far as to describe these formations as protocells: protein spheres that could grow to reproduce. You could have been an important intermediate stage on the way to the emergence of life. Microspheres could be the missing link between simple organic compounds and living cells.

Family

In 1937, Fox Raia Joffe, with whom he had three sons married.