Richard Roberts is a British microbiologist and biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the discontinuous structure of the gene.
early years
Richard Roberts was born on September 6, 1943 in the small English town of Derby into a poor family. Richard's father worked as a car mechanic, and his mother was a housewife. Soon after the birth of Richard, the family moved to the city of Bath, where he studied at school, and at the age of 17 he successfully graduated from it. It is known that later this school was named after Richard Roberts.
Education
Richard, who fell in love with biology during the years of study, entered the University of Sheffield, from which he graduated at age 22, in 1965, at the same year he entered graduate school. During this time, he became interested in molecular biology and conducted research related to the characterization of flavonoids, plant polyphenols. In 1969, Richard Roberts defended his dissertation related to phytochemical studies of neoflavonoids and isoflavonoids, and entered Harvard University, where he began to study transport RNA. Here the young scientist got acquainted with the works of Nathans, an American microbiologist and Nobel Prize winner, on restriction endonucleases (certain enzymes).
Scientist career and later life
Four years later (1973), 30-year-old Roberts moved to the New York laboratory at the invitation of James Watson, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA. Here he studied adenoviruses, using materials collected earlier, observed the sites of the end of the reading of viral RNA. After that, Richard abruptly changed the subject of his study and began to observe the splicing of RNA.
19 years later, in 1992, the scientist began working in a biotechnology company that established the production of restriction enzymes. Richard Roberts, working hard, went to new discoveries about the structure of the gene, more and more deeply he knew the living organism.
Roberts' discovery of alternative gene splicing had a profound impact on the study and application of molecular biology. The realization that some genes could exist as separate, unrelated segments in longer DNA strands first came about in the study of adenovirus. Roberts' research in this area led to a fundamental shift in the understanding of genetics and the discovery of split genes in higher organisms, including humans.
Personal life
Nothing is known about the family of Richard Roberts.
Roberts is an atheist and was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. Knighted in 2008. In 2016, he signed a letter calling for an end to the fight against GMOs, because, based on scientific data, he believed that genetically modified organisms are not dangerous.
Awards
In 1992, Roberts received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden.
In 1993, Roberts, together with Sharpe, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the discontinuous structure of the gene independently of each other.
In the same year, the famous scientist was awarded a Ph. D. from the University of Bath. In 1995, Roberts was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the European Organization for Molecular Biology.
