Born 26 Mar 1916; died 14 May 1995 at age 79.
Published
American biochemist who (with Stanford Moore and William H. Stein) received the 1972 #NobelPrize for Chemistry for research on the shape and primary structure of ribonuclease (the enzyme that hydrolyses RNA).
Ribonuclease is made up of a single peptide (a molecule consisting of two or more amino acid molecules joined by a peptide bond) chain folded into a sphere bound together by four disulphide bonds. These bonds can be broken down so that the enzyme becomes denatured (collapses), losing all of its enzyme properties.
Anfinsen found that its shape and consequently its enzymatic power could be restored, and concluded( that ribonuclease must retain all of the information about its configuration within its amino acids.
