Prof. Har Gobind Khorana’s Invention of synthetic gene made cloning possible

Novel laureate Prof. Har Gobind Khorana’s invention of synthetic gene made cloning possible

-today engineering new plants and animals are the need of the hour

Prof. Har Gobind Khorana was an India born American biochemist who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with other two scientists Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. When he had won the prize he was faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell’s synthesis of proteins. He was also awarded with Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year. He also served as faculties of three universities in North America and received the National Medal of Science in 1987.

Prof Har Gobind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 at Raipur (Multan) in Punjab Province (presently Punjab in Pakistan). His mother was Mrs Krishna Devi Khorana and father was Mr Ganpat Rai Khorana – a Hindu Punjabi Family. His father was a patwari (a village agricultural taxation clerk) in the British Indian government posted at Multan in West Punjab (now in Pakistan). He was born and brought up in such village atmosphere where even school was not there. He did his primary school education there only under the tree that was considered as school of the villagers. His family was considered as the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people. His family was poor but surviving well than many others in the village. Later, he went to stay with his father in Multan where he completed his school education from D.A.V. (Dayanand Anglo-Vedic) High School.

He was a meritorious student who later obtained scholarship and completed his BSc and MSc degrees from Punjab University in Lahore. For higher study he went to England to study organic chemistry on a Government of India Fellowship. After doing PhD in 1948 he pursued postdoctoral studies at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. After coming back to home in 1949, he tried to find a job at Punjab but could not succeed and finally decided to returned to England. Once again he went there on a fellowship to work with George Wallace Kenner and Alexander R. Todd on peptides and nucleotides and stayed in Cambridge from 1950 until 1952. After lot of struggle finally he got a position at British Columbia Research Council at University of British Columbia and he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, with his family in 1952.

He was excited by the prospect of starting his own lab at Vancouver, British Columbia. There his work on “nucleic acids and synthesis of many important bio molecules recognised him as a famous personality. In 1960 Khorana become co-director of the Institute for Enzyme research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and served the institute as a professor of biochemistry in 1962. During his tenure at University of Wisconsin, he completed the work that led him to get the Nobel Prize with two other scientists. “He made important contributions to this field by building different RNA chains with the help of enzymes. Using these enzymes, he was able to produce proteins. The amino acid sequences of these proteins then solved the rest of the puzzle and created synthetic gene by using non-aqueous chemistry,” says Novel prize website.

He became a US citizen in 1966 and taught Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor and later he became member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. Prof. Har Gobind Khorana married to Esther Elizabeth Sibler in 1952. They had met during their post doctoral study at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He got numerous awards, recognitions and accolades from different organisations and institutes which included: Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1968; Gairdner Foundation International Award  in 1980; Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize; For MemRS in 1978; Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research,  Padma Vibhushan and Willard Gibbs Award in 1974. Other honors included the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1971; and the Paul Kayser International Award of Merit in Retina Research, in 1987.

Prof. Har Govind Khorana was the first scientist who chemically synthesized oligonucleotides which was also the world’s first synthetic gene discovered in 1970s; that process in later stage became widespread and advanced the genome editing. He extended the DNA polymers into the first synthetic gene by using non-aqueous chemistry. Today these custom-designed artificial genes are widely used in labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and animals, and are integral to the expanding use of DNA analysis to understand gene-based human disease as well as human evolution. It was termed as a great revolution in genetic science which opened numerous ways of research and development in this direction. With it life became easy and several new varieties of plants and brads of animals were created.

Today his invention(s) have become commercialized and now anyone can have synthetic gene in the market from numerous companies. His former colleague at the University of Wisconsin summarised his work stating that Prof. Khorana was perhaps a founding father, of chemical biology. His impact was so deep that a community of scientists, industrialists, and social entrepreneurs namely “Khorana program” was created in 2007 in US and India with the help of, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Government of India (Department of Biotechnology), and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum. The objective of the program was to provide transformative research experiences to the graduate and undergraduate students as engaging partners in rural development and food security by facilitating them PPP program between the U.S. and India.

At the age of 89, Prof. Khorana passed away and departed to heavenly abode on 9 November 2011 at Concord in Massachusetts. His daughter Julia Elizabeth later wrote about her father’s work as a professor and said that even while doing all this research, Prof. Khorana was always interested in teaching the educating students and young people.