Source: Office of Medical Science
Written by: Office of Medical Science
Photo by: Wei Yi
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On the morning of November 11, Prof. Roger Kornberg, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, academician of both United States National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, gave a lecture entitled “Basic Science: Back to the Future” at Yat-sen Distinguished Scholars Forum in Science Building on North Campus of Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). The lecture was chaired by Prof. Li Mengfeng, Vice President of SYSU.

Prof. Kornberg reviewed the history of microbiological research and introduced the process and rules of genetic transcription, especially new findings in related fields and the process of new discoveries. He pointed out that biomedical research should be back to the basic. He talked about his own research experience and encouraged young researchers to dig deep into the research area in which they are interested.

Dr. Kornberg is a world renowned biochemist and professor of structural biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1967 and his PH.D in chemical physics from Stanford in 1972. He became a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England and then an Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School in 1976, before moving to his present position as Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford Medical School in 1978. Prof. Kornberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for his studies of process by which genetic information from DNA is copied to RNA, "the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription".