Roberts, Richard John (1943– )

British molecular biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1993 with Phillip Sharp for the discovery of split genes (genes interrupted by nonsense segments of DNA).

In the early 1970s most information about the structure of genes was derived from experiments on simple bacteria. These experiments indicated that a gene was a continuous sequence of nucleotides, the basic building blocks of DNA, holding the genetic information. Molecular biologists assumed that a similar situation would be found in higher organisms. However Roberts and Sharp, working independently, discovered that genes in higher organisms contained long stretches of DNA that held no genetic information. Roberts and Sharp published their results within weeks of each other in 1977.

Roberts was born in Derby, England, and educated at the University of Sheffield, receiving his PhD in 1968. He moved to the USA in 1969 and did research at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1972 he joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He moved to New England Biolabs in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1992 to become research director.

The fragmented nature of genes in higher organisms has far reaching consequences. One consequence is that the ‘nonsense segments’ of a gene must be removed by a process called gene splicing. This process can introduce errors in the gene that lead to inherited diseases or cancer.