Bruce Merrifield

Bruce Merrifield, who won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1969 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984, died on May 14, 2006, at the age of 84. Professor Merrifield, working at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), invented solid phase protein synthesis. This work enabled the efficient synthesis of proteins up to 100 residues in length, and the technology was later adapted to the synthesis of oligonucleotides.

In solid phase synthesis, the first residue is covalently attached to the solid phase, a polymer. Additional residues are added one at a time in a reaction that can exceed 99.5% efficiency, after which the unreacted starting material is washed away, with the product retained on the solid phase. Once the synthesis is completed, the protein is removed from the polymer. This method enabled the development of automated peptide synthesizers.

May 22 2006 | Biology | Comments Off