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By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Sydney Brenner, Nobel laureate whose studies on the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans led to fundamental discoveries in genetics and developmental biology, died today in Singapore. He was 92 years old.
Brenner has discovered some fundamental steps in how cells use DNA to make proteins that make life possible. He discovered that the sequences of three DNA bases encode the amino acids that form the proteins. And he discovered that RNA molecules transmit this information to ribosomes, the cellular machines that make these molecules.
Brenner was the pioneer of another major breakthrough in biology: the identification and development of the transparent worm. C. elegans as an ideal animal model; the worm is used today in laboratories all over the world. His first research on C. elegans and studies in subsequent years led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002 with two colleagues, John Sulston and H. Robert Horvitz. The Nobel Committee wrote that research on worms has identified "key genes regulating organ development and programmed cell death … and [it] shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases. "
Brenner was born to Jewish parents emigrated to South Africa, where his father worked as a shoemaker. He showed early precocity for science by entering the medical school in Johannesburg at the age of 15. Brenner quickly turned to genetics research: he met a co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick in 1953 and soon transferred to the University of Cambridge in the UK to work alongside him. As The Guardian In an obituary, Brenner and Crick "shared an office for 20 years, talking nonstop, mocking loudly and generating hundreds of ideas, which they tested in the lab with their indispensable research collaborator, Leslie Barnett."
Brenner, who was also known as a joker adept of the practice, continued to work until his 90s. He had been married for almost 60 years. his wife, May, passed away in 2010. He is survived by three children and one son-in-law.
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