Nobel Chemists Shed Light on Key Structure in Photosynthesis

In December the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was presented to three scientists who delineated the physical structure of a protein‐pigment complex that resides in a cell membrane and plays a critical role in photosynthesis. The three are Johann Deisenhofer of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Laboratories at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas; Robert Huber of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, West Germany; and Hartmut Michel of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt, West Germany. Before their work, many had felt that crystallizing and subsequently resolving the structure of a membrane‐bound protein would not be possible. The prize not only honors the researchers for this feat but also indirectly recognizes the key role played by this protein in nature’s process for converting sunlight into energy.

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