Nobel-winning research 'leap of faith'

With his Nobel Prize-winning father at his side, freshly-minted Nobel chemistry laureate Roger Kornberg has humbly credited perseverance with making the achievement possible.

Professor Kornberg, who works at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, has won the 2006 prize for work published in 2001 on how information in genes is copied and transferred.

"While winning a Nobel Prize is always an honour, this one is extra special, because we worked so long," Mr Kornberg said.

"It required a real leap of faith to sustain. The work took 20 years."

Mr Kornberg's father, Arthur, whose work in genetics won him a Nobel Prize in 1959, said: "Everything is in the genes".

Mr Kornberg was 12-years-old when he went to Stockholm with his dad, who received the 1959 Nobel Prize in medicine.

"I'll probably remember more of my father's ceremony than I will of mine, given everything that is going on around me," Professor Kornberg quipped.

He says while scientists have benefited from the complexity of his work, he hopes the achievement will give people everywhere the courage to pursue seemingly irrational ideas for the sake of intellectual exploration.

Professor Kornberg's eyes watered as he spoke of what it meant to him to follow in his father's footsteps.

"I don't know how to tell you," Roger Kornberg said.

"Your parents, your family. It's wonderful. I have no words for it."

Arthur Kornberg's Nobel was born of studies of how genetic information is transferred from one DNA molecule to another.

The younger Kornberg's achievement is to portray how the genetic code, DNA, is copied by an enzyme and the copy is then stored in the outer part of the cell.

Like computer software, this copy is then used as an instruction to cellular machinery to make proteins, the molecules that comprise and repair the body's tissues.

'Eukaryotic transcription'

The 2006 prize is for "eukaryotic transcription" - eukaryotes are a biological term for a vast category of organisms whose cells have a well-defined nucleus.

Human beings come into this category.

Professor Kornberg was the first to create a molecular picture of how transcription works in eukaryotes, thus providing a snapshot of one of the cornerstone processes of life.

"The truly revolutionary aspect of the picture Kornberg has created is that it captures the process of transcription in full flow," the Nobel jury said.

The pictures are so detailed that separate atoms can be distinguished, showing the cogs that drive the transcription process and regulate it.

"Transcription is necessary for all life," the jury said.

Problems with the transcription process are linked to many human illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and various kinds of inflammation.

"If transcription stops, genetic information is no longer transferred into different parts of the body," the jury said.

"Since these are no longer renewed, the organism dies within a few days."

'Passion' for science

Professor Kornberg and his father are the sixth father and son to win Nobel prizes.

While the Nobel committee has drawn a link between their research, Professor Kornberg said: "I don't honestly believe there's a connection".

"My father's work was in a very different subject at a very different time ... The methods and the direction of the work today is very far removed," he said.

But he says his father had given him his interest in science.

"What I doubtless acquired from him, at least in part, was my passion for science," he said.

"But beyond that I think the rest is up to each of us as individuals."

The 2006 laureate will receive a gold medal and a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($A1.8 million) at the formal prize ceremony.

This is held, as tradition dictates, on December 10 - the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prize's creator, Alfred Nobel.

- AFP