Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Tribute
  • Published:

A Tribute to Arthur Kornberg 1918–2007

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 15, pages 2–17 (2008)Cite this article

Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan, Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. bfuller@umich.edu

In the fall of 1977, I was an undergraduate at Yale applying to PhD programs in biochemistry. Stanford was suggested to me by my research advisor, Terry Platt, who had done his postdoctoral work there with Charles Yanofsky in Biology. In talking to other undergraduates and graduates students that I knew, I soon discovered that Stanford Biochemistry had quite a reputation. Of ten faculty, five were members of the National Academy of Sciences (four of the remaining five would be elected in coming years). Arthur Kornberg, who had founded the department, had discovered DNA polymerase, together with his then–postdoctoral fellow, Bob Lehman (also on the Stanford biochemistry faculty), and had won the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He had not merely discovered the polymerase, in fact, he had elucidated all of the basic features of DNA synthesis that are conserved in all living cells: the template-primer dependence, the fact that deoxynucleoside 5′ triphosphates were the substrates, the 5′→3′ direction of synthesis and incorporation of nucleotides according to Chargaff's rules. He had gone beyond that in the ensuing 20 years to begin to answer questions about the more complex process of DNA replication. Arthur and his colleagues, notably the legendary Reiji Okazaki, had elucidated the nature of the replication fork, with a continuous leading strand and a discontinuous lagging strand in which short fragments of DNA were synthesized in the direction opposite fork movement, primed by tiny RNA primers. Then in the 1970s, using the small, single-stranded bacteriophages M13 and ΦX174 as models, the Kornberg lab had begun to identify a series of enzymes that accounted for the operations of the replication fork: the DnaG primase, the DnaB helicase, the single-strand binding protein and the multisubunit DNA polymerase III holoenzyme with its remarkable fidelity, speed and processivity. In fact, I knew all about what Arthur had done because he literally wrote the book on it—DNA Synthesis, a book I had bought in connection with my course in molecular genetics taught by Sidney Altman.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Kornberg, A., Kornberg, S.R. & Simms, E.S. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 20, 215–227 (1956).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Kornberg, A., Zimmerman, S.B., Kornberg, S.R. & Josse, J. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 45, 772–785 (1959).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Kornberg, T. & Gefter, M.L. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 68, 761–764 (1971).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Kornberg, T. & Gefter, M.L. J. Biol. Chem. 247, 5369–5375 (1972).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Kornberg, R. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn Engl. 46, 6956–6965 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Kornberg, A. J. Biol. Chem. 182, 779–793 (1950).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Preiss, J. & Handler, P. J. Biol. Chem. 233, 493–500 (1958).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Bieganowski, P. & Brenner, C. Cell 117, 495–502 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Panozzo, C. et al. FEBS Lett. 517, 97–102 (2002).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Sandmeier, J.J., Celic, I., Boeke, J.D. & Smith, J.S. Genetics 160, 877–889 (2002).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Bitterman, K.J., Anderson, R.M., Cohen, H.Y., Latorre-Esteves, M. & Sinclair, D.A. J. Biol. Chem. 277, 45099–45107 (2002).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Anderson, R.M., Bitterman, K.J., Wood, J.G., Medvedik, O. & Sinclair, D.A. Nature 423, 181–185 (2003).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  13. Gallo, C.M., Smith, D.L. Jr. & Smith, J.S. Mol. Cell. Biol. 24, 1301–1312 (2004).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  14. Rowen, J.W. & Kornberg, A. J. Biol. Chem. 193, 497–507 (1951).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Grossman, L. & Kaplan, N.O. J. Biol. Chem. 231, 717–726 (1958).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Imai, T. & Anderson, B.M. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 254, 253–262 (1987).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Wielgus-Kutrowska, B., Kulikowska, E., Wierzchowski, J., Bzowska, A. & Shugar, D. Eur. J. Biochem. 243, 408–414 (1997).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Belenky, P. et al. Cell 129, 473–484 (2007).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

A Tribute to Arthur Kornberg 1918–2007. Nat Struct Mol Biol 15, 2–17 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb0108-2

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb0108-2

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing