According to reports, Nobel Prize winner Edmund Fisher, professor emeritus of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, died peacefully in Seattle on August 27 at the age of 101. To the University of Washington.
Fischer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edwin Krebs, a scientist at the University of Washington in 1992, for his research elucidating the key ways in which regulatory proteins are controlled in cells.
Enzymes and other proteins regulate processes such as cell growth and communication. But when the couple started working together in the 1950s, little was known about how these proteins work.
While researching a protein that helps manage the energy use of muscle cells, the couple discover It is turned on by adding a molecule called phosphate, and it is turned off by removing it. They also discovered an enzyme that promotes this process, called reversible phosphorylation.
Fischer recalled: “The initial response we described was very simple. If it weren’t absolutely essential for the regulation of cellular processes, no one would pay attention to it.” In the video.
Their research led to a large number of subsequent discoveries in the field. Reversible phosphorylation activates and inactivates a variety of proteins in a variety of organisms such as bacteria, plants and humans. It regulates events essential to life, such as muscle relaxation and contraction, cell division, and DNA replication.
The survey results are still Foundation Used for research that led to the development of a large number of drugs. These include the anticancer drug Gleevec and other similar drugs that affect protein phosphorylation.
Fischer’s early life was “full of uncertainty,” he said in a statement Autobiographical sketch For the Nobel Prize. He was born in Shanghai and was sent to a Swiss boarding school overlooking Lake Geneva with his two brothers at the age of seven.
On the advice of his parents, one of his brothers gave him a microscope on his 16th birthday. “This is a treasure,” he recalled when he was 99 years old, according to one University of Washington obituary.
Fischer was initially attracted to study microbiology, but turned to chemistry on the advice of a professor who told him: “For modern microbiologists, test tubes are more useful than microscopes.”
Joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in 1956; the natural beauty of the area reminded him of Switzerland. Although he officially retired in 1990, he continued to participate in biochemistry seminars and teacher lunches at the University of Washington until the pandemic began.
“The beauty of science is that you always know where you start, but you never know where you will end,” Fischer said. According to the Nobel Foundation.
Trisha Davis, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, said: “I will remember Eddie as both a scientist and an enthusiastic and outstanding colleague.” Tell UW MedicineWhen he visited the department before the pandemic, “he never told the same story twice. He is a great man. We will miss him very much.”
Last year, the department celebrated his 100th birthday and held a series of seminars, inviting the scientists he guided and influenced to participate.He is also a versatile pianist and Recent performance Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Online audience Nobel Prize winner and young scientist.
He has two sons and a stepdaughter, and four grandchildren, including Élyse Fischer obtain doctoral degree This fall, I will study structural biology and biochemistry in Cambridge, England.