American biologist David Baltimore, who won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery of the mechanisms for transmitting genetic information, has died at the age of 87, writes “The New York Times“.
Baltimore died on September 6 at his home in the village of Woods Hole in Massachusetts. The scientist's wife, Alice Huang, reported that the cause of death was complications from several types of cancer.
According to the publication, Baltimore was only 37 years old when he made the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize in 1975. Previously, it was believed that information in cells moved in only one direction - from DNA to RNA and to protein synthesis. Baltimore experimentally demonstrated that information can also be transmitted in the opposite direction - from RNA to DNA. The key point was the discovery of a viral enzyme called revertase, which reverses this process.
This discovery led to an understanding of retroviruses and viruses, including HIV, that use this enzyme. In an interview, Baltimore said that his parents were the children of immigrants from the Russian Empire. His mother was the daughter of a tailor from Odessa.