Photo: NIH — File:Sidney Altman.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain
Sidney Altman
1939–2022 · Canada, United States · Born 1900–1939
Nobel Chemistry 1989
Canadian-American molecular biologist who showed that RNA can be catalytic, sharing the prize for the discovery of ribozymes.
Nobel-winning work
Studying the enzyme RNase P, Altman proved that its RNA subunit alone can catalyse the cleavage of precursor tRNA — the first demonstration that RNA, not only protein, can act as an enzyme. The discovery of ribozymes overturned a dogma and made plausible an RNA world at the origin of life.
Fields
Related topics
Enzymes and enzyme kinetics
Enzymes accelerate reactions by lowering the activation free-energy barrier; they do not change the equilibrium constant.
DNA and RNA structure
DNA stores information in a paired double helix; RNA shares the nucleotide backbone but often forms diverse single-stranded folds.