A MAP MAKER OF MOLECULES

Author: Associated Press

Date: Tuesday, October 19, 1982
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER

He said yesterday he hopes his pioneering work on the structure of genes will lead to a new understanding of cancer.

Klug, 56, was cited by the Swedish Academy of Sciences for his "structural elucidation of important nucleic acid-protein complexes." Translation: He has figured out how some of the chemicals involved in human heredity are put together.

Winning the Nobel Prize was unexpected, he said, because his work in studying very large biological molecules "is not something that leads to a spectacular result."

He said he used the new method to study the structures of viruses and to discover how DNA - the component of genes that transmits hereditary information - is packaged with other proteins.

"We've discovered how the DNA is wrapped up and this gives us an idea of the structural organization of a gene. We don't yet understand how genes work but it may help elucidate how they do," Klug said.

By laying the basis for understanding the three-dimensional structure of genes, he said, he has created "a climate in which people think."

Asked how he will spend his $157,000 prize, he said, "I haven't made any
plans, but I do want to buy a new bicycle."

More than 100 colleagues and friends toasted Klug with champagne at a party in the canteen at the Medical Research Council's Molecular Laboratory in Cambridge, where he has worked for 20 years.

Stephen Lippard, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University in New York, has called Klug the "geographer of molecular biology," and has compared him to the explorer Magellan.

Human genes are made of nucleic acids such as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). The acids are too small to be seen with an ordinary microscope and too large to be studied by examining them under X-rays, a common method of studying chemical structure.

According to Lippard, Klug found a way to use the electron microscope, a tool much more powerful than an ordinary microscope, to determine the arrangement of the atoms in nucleic acids.

He then used the technique to examine viruses, nucleic acids and most recently chromosomes, which consist of genes (made of nucleic acids) intertwined with proteins.

Chromosomes contain a small protein core called a nucleosome, and Klug has shown that the nucleosome looks like "a sardine can with DNA wrapped arounial in understanding how genes work.

In making the award, the Nobel committee said that Klug's studies of chromosomes "will, in a longer perspective, undoubtedly be of crucial importance for our understanding of the nature of cancer."

Klug was born in South Africa but carries a British passport.

He received his education in South Africa and has been at Cambridge University for 20 years, working for England's Medical Research Council.

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