Edwin Krebs Dies at 91; Discovered a Crucial Bodily Process (original) (raw)
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- Dec. 24, 2009
Dr. Edwin G. Krebs, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1992 for discovering a crucial bodily process that helps govern the movement of muscles, the shape and division of cells, and even learning and memory, died Dec. 21 in Seattle. He was 91.
His death, at a chronic-care facility, was caused by progressive heart failure, said the University of Washington, where he taught and was a former chairman of the department of pharmacology. He lived in Seattle.
The process Dr. Krebs discovered in the 1950s with Edmond H. Fischer, a colleague at the University of Washington, activates proteins that can change the entire character of cell functions, thus regulating them. Among other actions, the process can trigger the release of hormones that govern bodily functions.
When the process is carried out in successive steps, it can create a cascade that has a powerful final effect. That wave helps to explain how a tiny amount of a hormone, say, can have a vast effect on normal functions throughout the body. It also helps explain cell growth and death.
“It was an embarrassingly simple reaction that we found,” Dr. Fischer said in a telephone interview Wednesday, and “it came out as a total surprise.”
“It turned out to be absolutely crucial for the regulation of cellular processes,” he said.
Imbalances in the cascade effect are believed to be important factors in the development of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and nervous system disorders. Researchers creating novel therapies to combat these diseases have drawn on the work of Drs. Krebs and Fischer, principally by adding and removing phosphates to cell proteins in a process called reversible protein phosphorylation.
“These days there’s not a pharmaceutical house or biotech company that doesn’t have an eye on those reactions,” Dr. Fischer said.
Yet other scientists were slow to recognize the Seattle researchers’ discovery. At the time the discovery was made, scientists knew that phosphoproteins, like casein in milk, were important in nutrition. But their dynamic role in regulating cell processes was not understood. They found that coupling one or more phosphate groups to a protein could change its properties in significant ways.
In 1992, the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm took note and awarded the two scientists the Nobel Prize in Medicine for that year.
In presenting the prize, Prof. Hans Jornvall of the Nobel Assembly likened phosphorylation to ballet shoes: “Despite their small size, they have dramatic effects on their wearer! The shape of the foot is altered, and after that, work is like a dance.” The process is reversible and can be repeated many times, like taking off and putting on the shoes.
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Edwin G. KrebsCredit...University of Washington
(Dr. Krebs said he was often confused with Dr. Hans Krebs, no relation, who won a Nobel Prize in 1953 for deciphering a series of chemical reactions that provide energy in cells and that is widely known as the Krebs cycle.)
Edwin Gerhard Krebs was born in Lansing, Iowa, on June 6, 1918. His father was a Presbyterian minister who moved the family a number of times. Dr. Krebs said he considered Greenville, Ill., his hometown, having moved there at age 6. His mother was a schoolteacher.
In an autobiography, Dr. Krebs described himself as a good student who liked to make gunpowder using materials bought at the local drug store or taken from an older brother’s chemistry set. But he had no youthful aspirations of becoming a chemist.
When Dr. Krebs was 15, his father died and his mother moved the family to Urbana, Ill., where his two brothers were enrolled in the University of Illinois. Dr. Krebs went on to graduate from Illinois in 1940, earn his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1943, and train there in internal medicine.
After serving in the Navy in World War II, Dr. Krebs returned to St. Louis intending to practice in an academic setting. Because there was a two-year waiting period for further medical training, he worked in biochemistry with Carl F. Cori and Gerty T. Cori, a husband-and-wife team who won a Nobel Prize in 1947 for their research on carbohydrate metabolism and enzymes.
Fascinated by the experience, Dr. Krebs chose working in a laboratory rather than directly with patients as a physician.
Dr. Krebs said he “jumped at the chance” to move to the University of Washington’s medical school in 1948, two years after it opened, because he had been struck by Seattle’s beauty when his naval vessel docked there in the war.
Dr. Krebs left in 1968 to become founding chairman of the department of biological chemistry at the University of California, Davis. He stayed there until 1976, when he returned to the University of Washington in Seattle to become chairman of the department of pharmacology.
Dr. Krebs was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and received a number of major prizes, among them: an Albert Lasker Basic Medicine Research Award; a Gairdner Foundation Award from Canada, and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University.
Dr. Krebs is survived by his wife, Virginia Krebs; two daughters, Sally Herman of Salem, Ore., and Martha Abrego of Shoreline, Wash., and a son, Robert Krebs of Seattle.
Dr. Krebs continued his teaching and research after receiving the Nobel at age 74. But he chose not to shift his research toward riskier directions.
“I used to think that if you won the Nobel Prize, you should turn to the hardest problem of all: how people think,” he told a University of Washington publication, Columns. “But I’ve decided that’s a bit arrogant. Instead, our research has continued to guide itself.”
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