Sumner, John

A. Tiselius, in presentation speech for the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to James B. Sumner, John H. Northrop, and Wendell M. Stanley, 1946... 

Sumner, Alex. John Dee. J Western Mystery Tradition, no. 1 (Autumnal Equinox 2001). rhttp //www.iwmt.org/vlnl/dee.htmll. 

Laufberger had tried to obtain the protein from horse liver, but it did not crystallize, and as he described to me when I met him in Prague some years ago, in those days everyone wanted to have protein crystals as a criteria of purity. Although James Sumner had crystallized jack bean urease in 1926, his preparations were somewhat impure, and it was only in the mid-1930s, when John Northrop and Moses Kubnitz showed that there is a direct correlation between the enzymatic activities of crystalline pepsin, trypsin and chymotrypsin that the protein nature of enzymes was generally accepted. 

Like many classic contributions to science, this spectacular advance was initially met with criticism and even derision. However, Sumner was not deterred he took his show on the road and, through demonstration, convinced many scientists of the protein nature of enzymes. Subsequently, a number of enzymes were crystallized in the 1930s by John Northrup and Moses Kunitz and were also shown to be proteins. These later preparations were essentially pure. Northrup and Kunitz demonstrated that enzyme activity paralleled the amount of protein present, laying the issue to rest. Sumner and Northrup shared the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ... 

The isolation and crystallization of urease by James Sumner in 1926 provided a breakthrough in early enzyme studies. Sumner found that urease crystals consisted entirely of protein, and he postulated that all enzymes are proteins. In the absence of other examples, this idea remained controversial for some time. Only in the 1930s was Sumner s conclusion widely accepted, after John Northrop and Moses Kunitz crystallized pepsin, trypsin, and other digestive enzymes and found them also to be proteins. During this period,... 

NORTHRUP, JOHN H. (1891-1987). An American chemist who won a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1946 along with James B. Sumner and Wendell M. Stanley. His work was primarily concerned with isolation and crystallization of enzymes. Many first included the production of the enzyme trypsin in the laboratory and isolation of the first bacterial virus. He was also responsible for producing diphtheria antitoxin in crystalline form. His education was at eastern schools including Harvard. Yale, and Princeton. 

In 1926, James B. Sumner, an American chemist, showed that enzymes were pure proteins and that enzymes could be crystallized. The fact that pure proteins could be enzymes was definitively proven by John H. Northrop and Wendell M. Stanley, who worked on digestive enzymes. Summer, Northrop, and Stanley were awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work. The discovery that enzyme crystals could be grown eventually allowed their actual 3-D structures to be determined by X-ray crystallography. Myoglobin was the first protein to have its structure solved by X-ray crystallography by the British scientists Max Perutz and Sir John Kendrew in 1958. In 1959, Perutz also solved the structure of hemoglobin, which led to the two scientists sharing the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

The proteins from the jack bean (Canavala ensiformis) were first studied over 60 years ago by Jones and Johns(6). Several years later, Sumner(7), while studying urease (also from the jack bean), isolated three other proteins, two of which could be crystallized, concanavalin A and B. It should be noted that this report of crystalline Con A by Sumner appeared about seven years before he reported the first crystallization of an enzyme, urease(8). 

John attended Sumner High School and then enrolled as an undergraduate student at the University of Kansas in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. He... 

John Northrop shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1946 with Wendell Stanley, awarded to them for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form, and with James Sumner, for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized. Although Sumner had been the first, in 1926, to crystallize an enzyme (urease) and to aver that enzymes were proteins, Northrop did more than any other scientist to establish that pure enzymes are indeed proteins. 

James Sumner received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1946 (which he shared with John Northrop and Wendell Stanley), for his discovery that... 

EXAMPLE 5.3 Many proteinaceous enzymes were purified from a large number of sources, but it was John B. Sumner who was the first to crystalhze one. The enzyme was urease from jack beans. For his travail, which took over 6 years (1924—1930), he was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize. The work demonstrated once and for all that proteinaceous enzymes are distinct chemical entities. 

John H. Northrop vindicates Sumner s assertion that all enzymes are proteins ... 

Sumner s analytical studies convinced him that urease was a protein. This conclusion was resisted by the chemical community but John H. Northrop s (1891-1987) crystallization of pepsin in 1930 at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City and its unambiguous decomposition into amino acids fully vindicated Sumner. Sumner and Northrop were able to make use of the ultracentrifiige developed by Svedberg and the electrophoresis technique developed by his student Tiselius to fully establish purities and molecular weights of their enzymes. Sumner and his coworkers then crystallized trypsin and chymotrypsin. Sumner and Northrop shared the 1946 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Wendell M. Stanley (1904—71), who in 1935 crystallized the tobacco mosaic virus in his laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute. 

In 1935, Wendell M. Stanley (1904—1971), working at Rockefeller University, crystallized tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and conducted its chemical analysis just like any other pure crystalline chemical substance. He demonstrated that crystalline TMV becomes fully active as a virus when bioassayed. For this work, Stanley shared the 1946 Nobel Prize in chemistry with James B. Sumner and John H. Northrop, who had established in the 1920s that all enzymes are proteins (see chapter 3). 

James Batcheller Sumner (1887-1955), United States. For his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized. John Howard Northrop (1891-1987), United States, and Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904-71), United States. For their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in pure form. ... 

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