RARE "Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Sidney Altman Hand Written Letter Dated 1995 For Sale
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RARE "Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Sidney Altman Hand Written Letter Dated 1995:
$209.99
Up for sale the "Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Sidney Altman Hand Written Letter Dated 1995.
ES-6354
Sidney Altman (born May 7, 1939) is a Canadian
and American[2] molecular biologist, who is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and
Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale
University. In 1989 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R.
Cech for their work on the catalytic properties of RNA. Altman was born on May 7, 1939, in Montreal,
Quebec,
Canada. His parents, Ray (Arlin), a textile worker, and Victor Altman, a
grocer,[3] were immigrants to Canada, each coming from
Eastern Europe as a young adult, in the 1920s. Altman's mother was from Białystok
in Poland,
and had come to Canada with her sister at the age of eighteen, learning English
and working in a textile factory to earn money to bring the rest of their
family to Quebec. Altman's father, born in Ukraine,
had been a worker on a collective farm in the Soviet Union. He was
sponsored to come to Canada as a farm worker, but later, as a husband and a
father of two sons, he supported the family by running a small grocery store in
Montreal. Sidney Altman was later to look back on his parents' lives as an
illustration of the value of the work ethic: "It was from them I learned
that hard work in stable surroundings could yield rewards, even if only in
infinitesimally small increments." As
Altman reached adulthood, the family's financial situation had become secure
enough that he was able to pursue a college education. He went to the United
States to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While at MIT, he was a member of the ice hockey team. After achieving his
bachelor's degree from MIT in 1960, Altman spent 18 months as a graduate
student in physics at Columbia University. Due to personal concerns
and the lack of opportunity for beginning graduate students to participate in
laboratory work, he left the program without completing the degree. Some months
later, he enrolled as a graduate student in biophysics at the University of Colorado Medical Center.
His project was a study of the effects of acridines
on the replication of bacteriophage T4 DNA. He received his
Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Colorado in 1967 with thesis
advisor Leonard Lerman; Lerman went in 1967 to Vanderbilt University, where Altman worked
briefly as a researcher in molecular biology before leaving for Harvard. Altman was married to Ann M. Körner
(daughter of Stephan Körner) in 1972. They are the parents
of two children, Daniel and Leah. Having lived primarily in the United States
since departing Montreal to attend MIT in 1958, Altman became a U.S. citizen in
1984, maintaining dual citizenship as a Canadian citizen as well. After
receiving his Ph.D., Altman embarked upon the first of two research
fellowships. He joined Matthew Meselson's laboratory at Harvard University to study a DNA endonuclease
involved in the replication and recombination of T4 DNA. Later, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
in Cambridge, England, Altman started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P
and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme. John D. Smith,
as well as several postdoctoral colleagues, provided Altman with very good
advice that enabled him to test his ideas. "The discovery of the first
radiochemically pure precursor to a tRNA
molecule enabled me to get a job as an assistant professor at Yale University
in 1971, a difficult time to get any job at all". Altman's career at Yale followed a
standard academic pattern with promotion through the ranks until he became
Professor in 1980. He was Chairman of his department from 1983 to 1985 and in
1985 became the Dean of Yale College for four years. On July 1, 1989, he
returned to the post of Professor on a full-time basis. His doctoral students
include Ben Stark. while at Yale, Altman's Nobel Prize
work came with the analysis of the catalytic properties of the ribozyme
RNase P,
a ribonucleoprotein particle consisting of both a
structural RNA molecule and one (in prokaryotes)
or more (in eukaryotes) proteins. Originally, it was believed that, in the
bacterial RNase P complex, the protein subunit was responsible for the
catalytic activity of the complex, which is involved in the maturation of
tRNAs. During experiments in which the complex was reconstituted in test tubes,
Altman and his group discovered that the RNA component, in isolation, was
sufficient for the observed catalytic activity of the enzyme,
indicating that the RNA itself had catalytic properties, which was the
discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize. Although the RNase P complex also
exists in eukaryotic organisms, his later work revealed that in those
organisms, the protein subunits of the complex are essential to the catalytic
activity, in contrast to the bacterial RNase P.
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