Nirenberg, Marshall Warren

Nirenberg, Marshall Warren, 1927–, American biochemist, b. New York, N.Y., Ph.D., Univ. of Michigan, 1947. He spent his entire career as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. Nirenberg was a co-recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. Nirenberg found that the arrangement of the four types of nucleotides on the DNA molecule (see nucleic acid) determines both the chemical composition and the function of new cells.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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