Press Release: Private Papers of Nobelist Martin Rodbell Added to "Profiles In Science" Web Site

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Private Papers of Nobelist Martin Rodbell Added to "Profiles In Science" Web Site:

Third Scientist to Be Added to Site

(Bethesda, Md.) --In November 1969, two scientists sat in a bar in downtown Washington, D.C. and developed a new theory to explain how cells communicate. It was a theory that revolutionized molecular biology. The two scientists, Martin Rodbell, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) biochemist, and Oscar H. Hechter, a Northwestern University steroid biochemist, borrowed the term "signal transduction" from computer science and used it to describe how cells receive signals and transmit them as information across the cell.

Dr. Martin Rodbell is the third scientist to be added to the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Profiles in Science web site (http://www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov/), the NLM's online digital library site dedicated to the lives and works of prominent 20th-century biomedical scientists.

"Thirty years later signal transduction is no longer merely a theory; it has become one of the fundamental paradigms of molecular biology in the 20th century," said Dr. Alexa McCray, who directs the Profiles in Science project. The Nobel committee recognized the significance of his contribution when in 1994 they awarded the Nobel prize to Rodbell along with Dr. Alfred G. Gilman of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

The son of a grocer, Rodbell was born in 1925 in Baltimore, a city he proudly identified with throughout his life. A renaissance man, Rodbell not only pursued biology, but his interest in French existential literature. The scientist maintained his strong love of literature often penning verses for important occasions.

Rodbell joined NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 1956. Over the next 40 years he held research positions at several other NIH institutes, the last being the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Chapel Hill, N.C.

In 1964, Rodbell published "The Metabolism of Isolated Fat Cells," one of the most important papers of his career, in which he showed how hormones affected individual cells. Until this time, most endocrinologists studied hormone action only on whole tissues, which were conglomerations of hundreds of millions of cells. Rodbell's article became one of the most influential articles in endocrinology of the 1960s and 1970s. Reflecting on his famous article in 1980, Rodbell wrote, "This paper was a turning point in the direction of my research career."

In 1971, Rodbell published his discoveries on the role of guanine nucleotide proteins (or G-proteins) in cellular metabolism. He was able to show that GTP (guanine triphosphate), a nucleotide, stimulated the activity of G-proteins in the cell. This led Rodbell to identify the G- proteins as crucial cellular components for transmitting information across the cell and for maintaining cellular metabolism. Further research during the 1970s and 1980s showed that the activity, or inactivity, of G-proteins in cells are responsible for certain diseases, such as cholera, and certain forms of cancer.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Rodbell became more philosophical about his work and his understanding of the G-proteins. After observing the research of other scientists, especially those of Gilman (his 1994 co-winner), Rodbell believed that G-proteins altered at the molecular level could become "programmable messengers." He even used the language of cellular regulation to describe modern society. As he declared in 1984, upon receiving the prestigious Gairdner International Award, "Democracy or not, our environment dictates that each of us must process the available information in a manner that best fits our individual and societal needs if we are to survive what is clearly a hostile environment."

The new site shows off a variety of documents and includes materials that span the various phases of Rodbell's life and career, from a 1939 diary entry written on the brink of World War II to video clips of his public lecture delivered just weeks before his death in December 1998. Other documents include correspondence, photographs, speeches and poems, laboratory notebooks, and unpublished papers. Site visitors can, for example, read the original poem Rodbell read before Carl Gustav, King of Sweden, upon accepting the Nobel Prize.

Profiles in Science was launched September 1998 by the National Library of Medicine, a part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. It is a continuing project and the Library plans to announce each new collection as it is added to the site.

Note to editors: pictures on this web site may be downloaded and printed. A photograph of Dr. Rodbell is available from the NLM (e-mail requests to publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov).

Last updated: 04 November 1999
First published: 04 November 1999
Permanence level: Permanent: Stable Content