Barker, Horace

Ballou, Clinton E., and Barker, Horace A., [Obituary of] William Zev Hassid, 32, 1-14... 

After leaving Julia with Mrs. Barker, Horace stopped by Washington Parish Training School. 

Horace A. Barker, Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 (1)... 

The function of vitamin B12 was first recognized in 1958 when Horace Barker found that it acts as a coenzyme for interconversion between L-glutamate and 3-methylaspartate (Barker et al. 1958). The structure of the coenzyme, ade-nosylcobalamin, was solved again by Hodgkin in 1961. 

Our own involvement in this area of research came about in an indirect way. A major interest in the laboratory had been the role of vitamin Bja in methyl group transfer from N -methyl-H4-folate to homocysteine to yield methionine, a problem that was an extension of studies on the isolation of the vitamin coenzyme while in Horace A. Barker s laboratory in 1958. When the exciting report by Clark and Marcker appeared showing that W-formylmethionine-tRNA (fMet-rRNA) was the initiator or protein synthesis, it was a natural extension of our work to examine the formation of fMet-tRNA, since this reaction also involved both a one-carbon transfer from a reduced folate derivative and the amino acid methionine. Herbert Dickerman, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory at that time, was able to purify the transformylase enzyme from E. coU extracts that catalyzed eqn. (1) ... 

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