Nobel Prize

His father, Arthur Kornberg, also won a Nobel prize for his work in genetics.

I guess good genetics runs in the family.

Has anyone read a good description of what it is about RNA transcription that he discovered? I read some things, and the press release, and it is unclear how this work is new. There’s a minor comment on how his pictures show “atoms”, but what does this mean?

If it’s the crystallographic technique that’s new, what about it, specifically? Because X ray crystallography certainly wouldn’t show atoms, but I can’t find a better description.

Here’s a source on the uses of X-ray crystallography to determine the positions of atoms within large protein molecules:

http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/BBS/whatis/cryst_an.html

A more detailed discussion is here:

http://www-structmed.cimr.cam.ac.uk/Course/Overview/Overview.html

As for Kornberg’s prize, remember, he’s not getting it just for managing to acquire a high-resolution X-ray structure. Many other proteins have been solved at the same level of detail. He’s being recognized for doing it to RNA polymerase, and using that data to work out how RNAPol does what it does. Here’s a discussion of the enzyme and of the Kornberg lab’s role in studying it:

http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/rna_polymerase.html

Again, don’t confuse the tool with the discovery. Think about this year’s Physics prize as an analogy: satellites have been launched before, and radio astronomy has been done before. But the use of satellite-based radio astronomy to provide the strongest-ever confirmation of the Big Bang and set off new areas of work in cosmology – that’s worth a Nobel.