Sidney Altman

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Sidney Altman (born May 7, 1939) is a Canadian and American molecular biologist who is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University.

He and Thomas R. Cech shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 for their research on RNA's catalytic properties.

Family and education

Altman was born in Montreal, Canada, on May 7, 1939. Ray (Arlin), a textile worker, and Victor Altman, a grocer, were both born in Canada in the 1920s, and both were refugees from Eastern Europe as a young adult. Altman's mother was from Biaystok, Poland, and she and her sister were able to go to Canada at the age of eighteen, learning English and working in a textile factory to make money to move the rest of their family's family to Quebec. Altman's father, who was born in Ukraine, had been a worker on a Soviet Union collective farm. He was invited to come to Canada as a farm employee, but later, as a husband and the father of two sons, he helped the family by opening a small grocery store in Montreal. Sidney Altman was later to reflect on his parents' lives as an example of the work ethic's value: "It was from them that I learned that hard work in stable environments could result in rewards, even if in tiny increments."

The family's financial situation had been stable enough that he was able to enroll in a college education as Altman reached adulthood. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he went to the United States to study physics. He was a member of the ice hockey team while at MIT. Altman earned his bachelor's degree from MIT in 1960 but continued to Columbia University as a graduate student in physics. He left the program without completing the degree due to personal worries and the lack of opportunity for beginning graduate students to participate in laboratory work. He joined University of Colorado Medical Center as a graduate student in biophysics some months later. His research was a review of the effects of antibiotics on the replication of bacteriophage T4 DNA. He obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Colorado in 1967 with thesis advisor Leonard Lerman; Lerman went to Vanderbilt University in 1967, where Altman briefly served as a scientist in molecular biology before moving to Harvard.

In 1972, Altman married Ann M. Körner (daughter of Stephan Körner). Daniel and Leah, two children's parents, are the parents. Altman, who had lived in the United States since graduating from Montreal to MIT in 1958, became a United States citizen in 1984, maintaining dual citizenship as a Canadian citizen as well.

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Career

After receiving his Ph.D., Altman embarked upon the first of two research fellowships. He joined Matthew Meselson's laboratory at Harvard University to study a DNA endonuclease involved in the replication and recombination of T4 DNA. Later, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, Altman started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that ribozyme. John D. Smith, as well as several postdoctoral colleagues, provided Altman with very good advice that enabled him to test his ideas. "The discovery of the first radiochemically pure precursor to a tRNA molecule enabled me to get a job as an assistant professor at Yale University in 1971, a difficult time to get any job at all".

Altman's career at Yale followed a standard academic pattern with promotion through the ranks until he became Professor in 1980. He was Chairman of his department from 1983 to 1985 and in 1985 became the Dean of Yale College for four years. On July 1, 1989, he returned to the post of Professor on a full-time basis. His doctoral students include Ben Stark.

While at Yale, Altman's Nobel Prize work came with the analysis of the catalytic properties of the ribozyme RNase P, a ribonucleoprotein particle consisting of both a structural RNA molecule and one (in prokaryotes) or more (in eukaryotes) proteins. Originally, it was believed that, in the bacterial RNase P complex, the protein subunit was responsible for the catalytic activity of the complex, which is involved in the maturation of tRNAs. During experiments in which the complex was reconstituted in test tubes, Altman and his group discovered that the RNA component, in isolation, was sufficient for the observed catalytic activity of the enzyme, indicating that the RNA itself had catalytic properties, which was the discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize. Although the RNase P complex also exists in eukaryotic organisms, his later work revealed that in those organisms, the protein subunits of the complex are essential to the catalytic activity, in contrast to the bacterial RNase P.

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