Merrifield: Robert

Merrifield, Robert Bruce (b. 1921) American chemist who developed an ingenious and rapid way of synthesizing proteins by lining up the constituent amino acids in the right order on a polystyrene bead, a process that has now been automated. This work earned him the 1984 Nobel Prize in chemistry. 

Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921-2006) was born in Fori Worth, Texas, anti received his Ph.D. at the University oi California, Los Angeles, in 1949. He then joined the faculty at the Rockefeller Institute, where he remained until his death. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his development of methods for the automated synthesis of peptides. 

Prize in 1963 for inventing a new general method to synthesize important polymers, a method that uncovered much new basic science. A Nobel Prize in 1984 went to Robert Bruce Merrifield for his invention of a general approach to the synthesis of polypeptides and proteins, in a style directly reminiscent of the biological method used in such synthesis. 

Robert Merrifield United States chemical synthesis... 

An American biochemist, Robert Bruce Merrifield conducted research that revolutionized the way chemical synthesis is done in a variety of fields, including drug development. 

Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921- ) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and received his Ph.D. at the University of California,... 

Kresge, N., Simoni, R. D., Hill, R. L. The soUd phase synthesis of ribonuclease A by Robert Bruce Merrifield. J. Biol. Chem. 2006, 26, e21-e23. 

Combinatorial chemistry is a sophisticated set of techniques used to synthesize, pnrify, analyze, and screen large numbers of chemical compounds, far faster and cheaper than was previously possible. The direct precursor of combinatorial chemistry was the solid-phase synthesis of polypeptides developed by American biochemist Robert Bruce Merrifield in the 1960s, followed by the advances in laboratory automation since then. Initial development of the field has been led by the pharmaceutical industry in the search for new drugs, but its applications are spreading into other fields of chemistry. Other terms associated with this field are parallel array synthesis and high-throughput chemistry. 

Any chemist knows that the more steps there are in a chemical synthesis, the lower the final yield. For example, if each step in a 10-step synthesis furnishes a 90 percent yield of product, the yield of the final product will be only about 35 percent. That is why it is not possible to extend Du Vigneaud s masterful syntheses (see chapter 6) of the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin (9 amino acid residues each) to proteins, even small ones such as ribonuclease A (124 amino acid residues). In order to pursue this daunting challenge Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921-2006), at Rockefeller University, devised a new concept solid-phase synthesis. The idea is disarmingly simple covalently attach an amino acid to a macroscopic particle that can be exposed to the reaction, washed, and then separated by simple filtration. Each reaction step requires no chromatography and no crystallization, just washing and filtering. At the end, completed peptide chains are chemically released from the particles. 

Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921-2006), United States. For his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix. ... 

Robert Bruce Merrifield (United States) for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix. Merrifield developed a simple and very clever way of synthesizing peptides or chains of nucleic acids. The method involves binding the first of the chain of (let s say) amino acids to a polymer. The subsequent residues can then be added synthetically, and this approach turns out to be faster and yield larger quantities of the desired final product than earlier methods. 

At the same time that Merrifield was developing his method for the solid-phase synthesis of peptides, Robert Letsinger (Northwestern University) was independently applying the same concept to polynucleotide synthesis. Modem methods for making oligonucleotides are direct descendants of Letsinger s method. 

SPPS was originally developed by Robert Brace Merrifield in 1963 and involves stepwise additions of protected amino acids to a growing peptide chain, which is covalently bound to a solid resin particle. The solid support for peptide synthesis must maintain a stable physical form that allows filtration in all of the... 

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