Everything about Fred Sanger totally explained
Frederick Sanger,
OM,
CH,
CBE,
FRS (born
13 August 1918) is an
English biochemist and twice a
Nobel laureate in
chemistry. He is the fourth (and only living) person to have been awarded two
Nobel Prizes.
Early years
Sanger was born in
Rendcomb, a small village in
Gloucestershire, the second son of Frederick Sanger, a medical practitioner, and his wife, Cicely. He was born on August 13, 1918, and educated at
Bryanston School and then completed his
Bachelor of Arts in natural sciences from
St John's College, Cambridge in
1939. Raised as a Quaker, he learned to abhor violence, and during the
Second World War he was a
conscientious objector, being allowed to continue his research for a
PhD.
He originally intended to study
medicine, but became interested in
biochemistry because some of the leading biochemists in the world were at Cambridge at the time. He completed his PhD in 1943 under A. Neuberger, on lysine metabolism and a more practical problem concerning the
nitrogen of potatoes. He went on to discover the structure of
proteins, most famously that of
insulin protein. He also contributed to the determination of base sequences in
DNA
Research
Sanger determined the complete
amino acid sequence of
insulin in 1955. In doing so, he proved that
proteins have definite structures. He began by degrading insulin into short fragments by mixing the
trypsin enzyme (that hydrolyses the peptide/amide bonds between amino acids that make up the primary structure of proteins) with an insulin
solution. He then undertook a form of
chromatography on the mixture by applying a small sample of the mixture to one end of a sheet of filter paper. He passed a
solvent through the filter paper in one direction, and passed an
electric current through the paper in the opposite direction. Depending on their
solubility and
charge, the different fragments of insulin moved to different positions on the paper, creating a distinct pattern. Sanger called these patterns “fingerprints”. Like human
fingerprints, these patterns were characteristic for each protein, and reproducible. He reassembled the short fragments into longer
sequences to deduce the complete structure of insulin. Sanger concluded that the protein insulin had a precise amino acid sequence. It was this achievement that earned him his first
Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1956.
In 1975, he developed the
chain termination method of DNA sequencing, also known as the
Dideoxy termination method or the
Sanger method. Two years later he used his technique to successfully sequence the genome of the
Phage Φ-X174; the first fully sequenced DNA-based genome. He did this entirely by hand. This has been of key importance in such projects as the
Human Genome Project and earned him his second
Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1980, together with
Walter Gilbert. The only other laureates to have done so were
Marie Curie,
Linus Pauling and
John Bardeen. He is the only person to receive both prizes in chemistry. In 1979, he was awarded the
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from
Columbia University together with
Walter Gilbert and
Paul Berg, co-winners of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Later in life
Frederick Sanger retired in 1983. In 1992, the
Wellcome Trust and the
Medical Research Council founded the Sanger Centre (now the
Sanger Institute), named after him. The Sanger Institute, located near
Cambridge, England, is one of the world's most important centres for
genome research and played a prominent role in
sequencing the
human genome.
Almost his only public utterance in two decades was to put his name to a letter by other UK Nobel laureates protesting about the
Iraq war. Referring to his youthful conscientious objection, he said, "I still hate war. That is why I signed that letter".
In 2007 the
British Biochemical Society was given a grant by the Wellcome Trust to catalogue and preserve the 35 laboratory notebooks in which Sanger recorded his remarkable research from 1958 to 1983. In reporting this matter,
Science magazine noted that Sanger, "the most self-effacing person you could hope to meet," now was spending his time gardening at his
Cambridgeshire home.
Even in retirement Sanger has used his extensive knowledge of DNA to aid modern scientists and academics in their work.
Awards and honours
- Frederick Sanger, Esq. (13 August 1918-1943)
- Dr Frederick Sanger (1943-18 March 1954)
- Dr Frederick Sanger, FRS (18 March 1954-1963)
- Dr Frederick Sanger, CBE, FRS (1963-1981)
- Dr Frederick Sanger, CH, CBE, FRS (1981-11 February 1986)
- Dr Frederick Sanger, OM, CH, CBE, FRS (11 February 1986-present)
- the only one of the four to win two nobel prizes 1958 Nobel Prize
for "work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin"
- 1980 Nobel Prize for "contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids"
Further Information
Get more info on 'Fred Sanger'.
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