Photo credit: SCWIST / Simon Fraser University Archives — File:Michael Smith cropped.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 4.0
Michael Smith
1932–2000 · Canada, United Kingdom · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1993
British-born Canadian biochemist at the University of British Columbia who invented site-directed mutagenesis, a cornerstone technique of protein engineering.
Nobel Prize work
Established oligonucleotide-based site-directed mutagenesis: a synthetic DNA primer carrying a deliberate mismatch is annealed to a template so that a chosen base changes at a precise position. The method let researchers rewrite single amino acids in proteins at will, transforming the study of protein structure and function.
Fields
Related topics
Protein structure and function
A protein is a sequence that folds into a shape; its surface and flexibility help determine what it can bind or catalyse.
DNA and RNA structure
DNA stores information in a paired double helix; RNA shares the nucleotide backbone but often forms diverse single-stranded folds.