Marianne Grunberg-Manago | |
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Born | Petrograd (now St Petersburg), Soviet Union | January 6, 1921
Died | January 3, 2013 | (aged 91)
Nationality | French |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biochemistry |
Marianne Grunberg-Manago (January 6, 1921 – January 3, 2013) was a Soviet-born French biochemist. Her work helped make possible key discoveries about the nature of the genetic code. Grunberg-Manago was the first woman to lead the International Union of Biochemistry and the 400-year-old French Academy of Sciences.
Grunberg-Manago was born into a family of artists who adhered to the teachings of the Swiss educational reformer Johann Pestalozzi. When she was 9 months old, Grunberg-Manago's parents emigrated from the Soviet Union to France.
Grunberg-Manago studied biochemistry and, in 1955, while working in the lab of Spanish-American biochemist Severo Ochoa,[1] she discovered the first nucleic-acid-synthesizing enzyme.[2] Initially, everyone thought the new enzyme was an RNA polymerase used by E. coli cells to make long chains of RNA from separate nucleotides.[3] But although the new enzyme could link a few nucleotides together, the reaction was highly reversible and it later became clear that the enzyme, polynucleotide phosphorylase, usually catalyzes the breakdown of RNA, not its synthesis.[4]
Nonetheless, the enzyme was extraordinarily useful and important. Almost immediately, Marshall Nirenberg and J. Heinrich Matthaei put it to use to form the first three-nucleotide RNA codons, which coded for the amino acid phenylalanine. This first step in cracking the genetic code entirely depended on the availability of Grunberg-Manago’s enzyme. [5]
In 1959, Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg won the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the synthesis of the nucleic acids RNA and DNA." She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978,[6] a Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1982,[7] and an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1992.[8]
Grunberg-Manago was the first woman president of the International Union of Biochemistry (1985–1988), and she was also the first woman to preside over the French Academy of Sciences (1995–1996).[9]
Late in her career, Grunberg-Manago was named emeritus director of research at CNRS, France’s National Center for Scientific Research.[9]
Grunberg-Manago died in January, 2013, three days before her 92nd birthday.[10]