Kalckar, Herman

Plesner, Paul, and Kalckar, Herman M., Enzymic Micro Determinations of Uric Acid, Hypoxanthine, Xanthine, Adenine, and Xanthopterine by... 

Plesner, Paid, and Kalckar, Herman M., Enzymic Micro... 

Watson spent 1950 and 1951 as a National Research Council fellow in Copenhagen doing postdoctoral work with biochemist Herman Kalckar. Watson had hoped to learn more about the biochemistry of the genetic material deoxyribonncleic acid (DNA). These studies proved unproductive. It was not until the spring of 1951, when he heard the Engfish biophysicist... 

The coenzyme of carboxylase (thiamine pyrophosphate) was shown to be the active form of vitamin B, a method for its estimation was developed, its enzymatic synthesis in animal tissues was demonstrated. Perhaps the most important part of Ochoa s work at Oxford was the discovery of the coupling of phosphorylation with oxidation of pyruvic acid in brain. Here he demonstrated the obligatory relationship between these two processes, a contribution which came almost at the same time as the observations of Herman Kalckar in Denmark and Vladimir A. Belitzer in the Soviet Union. Ochoa was the first to show the formation of three phosphate bonds for each oxygen atom used in the process. 

When Ochoa arrived, the laboratory was in a period of frantic activity. The crucial experiments leading to the discovery of phosphorylase and the synthesis of glycogen in vitro by this enzyme had been performed the previous year. In the Cori laboratory were Herman Kalckar, Sidney Colowick, Earl Sutherland and others. 

My upbringing in science was amongst people who love enzymes. Harland Wood s department introduced me to the enzymes that drive the cycles and pathways of intermediary metabolism Herman Kalckar taught me the awe of wondering why and how they do and Arthur Kornberg persuaded me to be skeptical of experiments (mine and others) done with impure enzymes. 

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