Bernard Horecker

From WikiProjectMed
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Bernard Horecker
portrait showing head and shoulders, in black and white
Horecker in 1966
Born
Bernard Leonard Horecker

(1914-10-31)31 October 1914[1]
Chicago, Illinois, USA[1]
Died10 October 2010(2010-10-10) (aged 95)[1]
Fort Myers, Florida, USA[1]
EducationUniversity of Chicago (Ph.D. 1939)[1]
Parents
  • Paul Horecker (father)
  • Bessie (Bornstein) Horecker (mother)
AwardsNational Academy of Sciences
Scientific career
FieldsBiochemistry
InstitutionsNational institutes of Health, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, Cornell University[1]
Doctoral advisorThorfin R. Hogness[2]
Doctoral studentsJ. Edwin Seegmiller

Bernard Leonard (Bernie) Horecker (1914–2010) was an American biochemist known for work on the pentose phosphate pathway, and for cellular regulation in general.

Birth and education

Bernard Horecker was born in Chicago on 31st October 1914. He studied at the University of Chicago and obtained his Ph.D. there in 1939. Laureate honoris causa in Biological Sciences, University of Urbino, Italy, 1982.

Career

Principal positions

Starting as a biochemist at the United States Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland from 1941 to 1959, Horecker moved to the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, until 1963, then at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in Nutley, New Jersey and finally at Cornell University.[1]

Visiting positions

He was a visiting professor of biochemistry at the University of California in 1954, and a guest research worker at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, 1957-1958. Later he had many visiting appointments, both in USA and in other countries, including Paraná (Brazil), Kyoto (Japan), Ferrara (Italy), and Rotterdam (The Netherlands).[1]

Editorial work

Horecker was (with Earl Stadtman) founding editor of Current Topics in Cellular Regulation, a major series in the subject, and continued in the role up to volume 23 (1984).[1]

Research

According to Kresge and colleagues[2] Horecker “made seminal contributions to our understanding of the enzyme-catalyzed reactions in carbohydrate metabolism, especially those of the pentose phosphate pathway.” He started his scientific career with a manometric study of succinate dehydrogenase.[3] Later he worked with Arthur Kornberg on spectroscopic aspects of pyridine nucleotides,[4] with whom he also studied glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase.[5] However, he is best known for his work in elucidating the pentose phosphate pathway.[6] [7] Much of his work, especially of the enzymes on aldolase and transaldolase was done in collaboration with Sandro Pontremoli at the University of Genoa.

Horecker published many papers, of which Web of Science [8] lists 450, many of them highly cited. The breadth of his work can be judged from papers on a wide variety of topics, such as galactose oxidase,[9] metabolic formation of phosphglycerate,[10] protein kinase-C,[11] release of alkaline phosphatase from bacterial cells[12] and prothymosin-α.[13]

Awards

Horecker was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1961, and received many other awards, including the presidency of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (at the time the American Society of Biological Chemists), and was the first recipient of its Merck Award in 1981. In 1952 he received the Paul Lewis Award in Enzyme Chemistry (now the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry) from the Division of Biological Chemistry of the American Chemical Society.[1][2]

Horecker was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry,[14] by Leopold Ružička in 1957, and by Felix Haurowitz in 1961.[1][2][15]

Death and family

Bernard Horecker died in Fort Myers, Florida, in 2010, survived by his widow Frances (Goldstein) Horecker.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "National Academy of Sciences: Bernard Leonard Horecker" (PDF). Retrieved 6 October 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d Kresge, Nicole; Simoni, Robert D.; Hill, Robert L. (2005). "Bernard L. Horecker's Contributions to Elucidating the Pentose Phosphate Pathway". J. Biol. Chem. 280 (29): E26–E27.
  3. ^ Horecker, B. L.; Stotz, E.; Hogness, T. R. (1939). "The promoting effect of aluminum, chromium, and the rare earths in the succinic dehydrogenase-cytochrome system". J. Biol. Chem. 128 (1): 251–256. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(18)73748-4.
  4. ^ Horecker, B. L.; Kornberg, A. (1948). "The extinction coefficients of the reduced band of pyridine nucleotides". J. Biol. Chem. 175 (1): 385–390. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(18)57268-9. PMID 18873313.
  5. ^ Kornberg, A.; Horecker, B. L.; Smyrniotis, P. Z. (1955). Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase — 6-phosphogluconic dehydrogenase. Methods Enzymol. Vol. 1. pp. 323–327. doi:10.1016/0076-6879(55)01046-X. ISBN 9780121818012.
  6. ^ Horecker, B. L.; Smyrniotis, P. Z.; Seegmiller, J. E. (1951). "The enzymatic conversion of 6-phosphogluconate to ribulose-5-phosphate and ribose-5-phosphate". J. Biol. Chem. 193 (1): 383–396. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(19)52464-4. PMID 14907726.
  7. ^ Horecker, Bernard L. (2002). "The pentose phosphate pathway". J. Biol. Chem. 277 (50): 47965–47971. doi:10.1074/jbc.X200007200. PMID 12403765.
  8. ^ "Web of Science".
  9. ^ Avigad, G.; Asensio, C.; Horecker, B. L.; Amaral, D. (1962). "D-Galactose oxidase of Polyporus circinatus". J. Biol. Chem. 237 (9): 2736–2743. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(18)60220-0. PMID 13863403.
  10. ^ Weissbach, A.; Horecker, B. L.; Hurwitz, J. (1956). "Enzymatic formation of phosphoglyceric acid from ribulose diphosphate and carbon dioxide". J. Biol. Chem. 218 (2): 795–810. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(18)65843-0. PMID 13295231.
  11. ^ Melloni, E.; Pontremoli, S.; Michetti, M.; Sacco, O.; Sparatore, B.; Salamino, F.; Horecker, B. L. (1984). "Binding of protein kinase-C to neutrophil membranes in the presence of Ca2+ and its activation by a Ca2+-requiring proteinase". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 82 (19): 6435–6439. doi:10.1073/pnas.82.19.6435. PMC 390731. PMID 2995965.
  12. ^ Malamy, M. H; Horecker, B. L. (1964). "Release of alkaline phosphatase from cells of Escherichia coli upon lysozyme spheroplast formation". Biochemistry. 3I (12): 1889–1893. doi:10.1021/bi00900a017. PMID 14269305.
  13. ^ Haritos, A. A.; Goodall, G. J.; Horecker, B. L. 10.1073/pnas.81.4.1008 (1984). "Prothymosin-α — isolation and properties of the major immunoreactive form of thymosin-α1 in rat thymus". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 81 (4): 1008–1011. Bibcode:1984PNAS...81.1008H. doi:10.1073/pnas.81.4.1008. PMC 344752. PMID 6583693.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ "Nomination archive". Retrieved 8 October 2023.
  15. ^ Information about nominations is not published by the Nobel Foundation until 50 years have elapsed after the nomination, so there is no information available about any nominations that may have been made since 1973.
Retrieved from "https://mdwiki.org/wiki/Bernard_Horecker"