| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
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| Altman, Sidney |
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| 1939–, Canadian-American molecular biologist, b. Montreal, Ph.D., Univ. of Colorado, 1967. A professor at Yale Univ. since 1971, he discovered that RNA could function as enzymes; it was previously thought that enzymatic activity was only possible in protein molecules. His discovery has a potential use in fighting viral infections. For this work, Altman shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics with Thomas Cech, who independently made the same discovery. |
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| | | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
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