Alexander Rich Explained

Alexander Rich
Birth Date:1924 11, df=yes
Birth Place:Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
Death Place:Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Field:Biophysics
Work Institution:Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alma Mater:Harvard University
Known For:discovery of polysomes and Z-DNA

Alexander Rich (15 November 1924  - 27 April 2015) was an American biologist and biophysicist. He was the William Thompson Sedgwick Professor of Biophysics at MIT (since 1958) and Harvard Medical School. Rich earned an A.B. (magna cum laude) and an M.D. (cum laude) from Harvard University. He was a post-doc of Linus Pauling. During this time he was a member of the RNA Tie Club, a social and discussion group which attacked the question of how DNA encodes proteins. He has over 600 publications to his name.[1]

Born in Hartford, Connecticut,[2] Rich was the founder of Alkermes and was a director beginning in 1987. Rich was co-chairman of the board of directors of Repligen, a biopharmaceutical company. He also served on the editorial board of Genomics and the Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics.

Personal life

Rich spent his early life in Springfield, Massachusetts.[3] He grew up in a working-class family and worked in the U.S. Armory while he was in high school. From 1943 to 1946, Rich was in the U.S. Navy.[4]

He obtained a bachelor's in biochemical sciences from Harvard University in 1947 and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1949.[4] Rich died on 27 April 2015, aged 90.[5]

Academic career

At Harvard, Rich studied with John Edsall, who inspired him to pursue an academic career. In 1949, he moved to the California Institute of Technology to perform postdoctoral research with Linus Pauling.[4] He met James Watson during his time in Pauling's lab.[6] He stayed in Pauling's group until 1954. Rich worked as a section chief in physical chemistry at the National Institutes of Health from 1954 to 1958.[4] He spent a sabbatical at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (1955–1956), where he worked with Francis Crick and solved the structure of collagen.[7] He became a professor at MIT in 1958. He worked diligently at MIT until his death in 2015.[4] He still went into lab until two months before his death.

Contributions to science

His work played a pivotal role in the discovery of nucleic acid hybridization.[8]

In 1955, Rich and Crick solved the structure of collagen.

In 1963, Rich discovered polysomes: clusters of ribosomes which read one strand of mRNA simultaneously.[9]

From 1969 to 1980, he was a biology investigator looking for life on mars with NASA's Viking Mission to Mars.[10]

In 1973, Rich's lab determined the structure of tRNA.[11]

In 1979, Rich and co-workers at MIT grew a crystal of Z-DNA.[12] After 26 years of attempts, Rich et al. finally crystallised the junction box of B- and Z-DNA. Their results were published in an October 2005 Nature journal.[13] Whenever Z-DNA forms, there must be two junction boxes that allow the flip back to the canonical B-form of DNA.

List of awards and prizes received

Awards and prizes

Academies

References

Selected publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. Schimmel. Paul. Paul Schimmel. Alexander Rich (1924–2015) Biologist who discovered ribosome clusters and 'left-handed' DNA.. Nature. 521. 7552. 2015. 291. 0028-0836. 10.1038/521291a. 25993953. 2015Natur.521..291S . 205085052. free.
  2. Web site: Archived copy . 15 March 2020 . 3 March 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160303174012/http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/2008/rich2008.pdf . dead .
  3. Web site: Alexander Rich, the importance of RNA and the development of nucleic acid hybridization. 2018-05-31. MIT Department of Biology. en-US. 2020-03-21.
  4. Web site: Alexander Rich dies at 90. MIT News. 28 April 2015 . 2020-03-21.
  5. Web site: Alexander Rich dies at 90. Trafton A. 2015.
  6. Web site: Alex Rich. 2016. Cold Spring Harbor Oral History. 20 March 2020.
  7. Rich. Alexander. Crick. F. H. C.. 12 November 1955. The Structure of Collagen. Nature. en. 176. 4489. 915–916. 10.1038/176915a0. 13272717. 1955Natur.176..915R. 9611917. 0028-0836.
  8. Web site: Gobind Khorana and the rise of molecular biology. 2018-05-24. MIT Department of Biology. en-US. 2020-03-21.
  9. Warner JR, Knopf PM, Rich A. 1963. A Multiple Ribosomal Structure in Protein Synthesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 49. 1. 122–129. 1963PNAS...49..122W. 10.1073/pnas.49.1.122. 300639. 13998950. free.
  10. Web site: ch7. history.nasa.gov. 2020-03-21.
  11. Perrigue. Patrick M.. Erdmann. Volker A.. Barciszewski. Jan. 1 October 2015. Alexander Rich: In Memoriam. Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 40. 11. 623–624. 10.1016/j.tibs.2015.08.009. 26439533. free.
  12. Wang AH, Quigley GJ, Kolpak FJ, Crawford JL, van Boom JH, Van der Marel G, Rich A. 1979. Molecular structure of a left-handed double helical DNA fragment at atomic resolution. Nature. 282. 5740. 680–686. 1979Natur.282..680W. 10.1038/282680a0. 514347. 4337955.
  13. Ha SC, Lowenhaupt K, Rich A, Kim YG, Kim KK. 2005. Crystal structure of a junction between B-DNA and Z-DNA reveals two extruded bases. Nature. 437. 7062. 1183–1186. 2005Natur.437.1183H. 10.1038/nature04088. 16237447. 2539819.
  14. Web site: 2008 Welch Award in Chemistry Recipient . The Welch Foundation . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20081019063524/http://www.welch1.org/Awards/WelchAwardinChemist0943/CurrentRecipient.asp . 19 October 2008 .

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