Kornberg, Roger David (1947– )

US biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for discovering and directly imaging the mechanisms of genetic transcription in eukaryote cells at a molecular level.

Kornberg studied the mechanisms involved in transcription (the process by which genetic information is copied from DNA into messenger RNA). Kornberg and his team discovered how to directly image how transcription works in eukaroytes, a group of organisms that includes humans and brewers yeast. The team developed a method using x-ray crystallography to obtain highly detailed three dimensional images of each stage in the transcription mechanism in a eukaroyte cell at a molecular level. The precision of the method allowed each stage of formation of RNA molecules to be observed including the role played by individual atoms during the process.

Kornberg was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was awarded his PhD from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, in 1972. He was assistant professor at the Biological Chemistry Department of Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, from 1976 until moving to Stanford University in 1978 to become a professor in the Structural Biology Department. Kornberg was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, US in 1993 and became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. Kornberg is Mrs George A Winzer Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.