Abstract
BIOCHEMISTS will learn with pleasure that Prof. J. B. Sumner name is included among those who share, this year the Nobel prize for chemistry. Prof. Sumner, professor of biochemistry in Cornell Univer sity, will always be remembered as the first person to succeed in crystallizing an enzyme urease. This he accomplished in May 1926, and in doing so he helped greatly to dissipate the fog of obscurity which had surrounded the subject of enzyme chem istry. The isolation of the crystalline enzyme suceeded only after many years of preliminary work, during which period every conceivable method of purification was tried. Eventually, after studying the constituents of the jack bean and paying special attention to the properties of its proteins, an extremely simple pro cedure for the isolation of urease was adopted. It consisted of stirring 100 gm. jack bean meal with 500 ml. of 32 per cent acetone and allowing the mix ture to filter in an ice chest. After standing over night, the filtrate was seen to contain colourless octahedral crystals, which were found to be crystals of urease. Sumners claim to have isolated the first enzyme in crystalline form was strongly contested, especially by members of the Willstter school, and biochemists will recall the general scepticism with which the claim was at first received. Sumner's finding was, however, quickly confirmed, and it was followed during 1930,1931 and 1933 by the crystalliza tion of the proteolytic enzymes pepsin, trypsin and chymotrypsin by Northrop, and by Northrop and Kunitz. More than twenty enzymes have now been obtained pure, among these the well-known enzyme catalase crystallized by Sumner and Dounce in 1937. The use of crystalline enzymes has led to a major advance in our knowledge of the chemistry of enzymes, and they are now familiar objects of study in the hands of biochemists and physical chemists. Sumner's name is also associated with much interest ing work on enzyme kinetics and on the production of anti-enzymes by immunological methods.
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Nobel Prize for Chemistry: Prof. J. B. Sumner. Nature 158, 826 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158826a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158826a0