Hoagland, Mahlon Bush (1921- )

US biochemist who was the first to isolate transfer RNA (tRNA), a nucleic acid that plays an essential part in intracellular protein synthesis.

Hoagland was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied at Harvard University Medical School, and worked there 1953-67. In 1967, he was appointed professor at Dartmouth Medical School and scientific director of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

In the late 1950s Hoagland isolated various types of tRNA molecules from cytoplasm and demonstrated that each type of tRNA can combine with only one specific amino acid. Each tRNA molecule has as part of its structure a characteristic triplet of nitrogenous bases that links to a complementary triplet on a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule. A number of these reactions occur on the ribosome, building up a protein one amino acid at a time.

Hoagland has also investigated the carcinogenic effects of beryllium and the biosynthesis of coenzyme A.