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Today's Google Doodle celebrates the 96th birthday of biochemist Har Gobind Khorana, who constructed the first synthetic gene.
Khorana was born in 1922 in the small village of Raipur, which today is in eastern Pakistan but which at the time was part of British-held India. His father, a tax clerk, insisted that Khorana and his five siblings learn to read and write, a rarity in the rural village, and that determination paid off in the form of academic scholarships that helped Khorana work his way to a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1948. From there, his research career took him to England, Switzerland, Canada, and eventually the United States, where he became a citizen in 1966.
Two years later, in 1968, Khorana shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, for their discovery that the nucleotides in DNA spell out a code that determines which amino acids to produce. The amino acids, in turn, form proteins, and that simple process turns the code in our genes into every physical aspect of who we are and how our bodies work.
And in 1973, Khorana built the first synthetic gene: a yeast RNA. Today's feats of genetic engineering would be impossible without Khorana's work.
Google’s logo today is a tribute to an Indian-American biochemist who played an important part in figuring out how DNA works.
The Google Doodle honors Har Gobind Khorana, who won a Nobel Prize in 1968 for his work on genes and nucleotides, which are the basic structural units of DNA. He was born on January 9th, 1922, or 96 years ago today. Khorana was the youngest of five children, and his father helped all five learn to read and write, which was uncommon for villagers in Raipur, India at the time.
When Khorana grew up and attended college in the US, he was able to gain scholarships and obtain a doctorate in organic chemistry by 1948, when he was 26 years old. His work took him to England, Switzerland, and Canada, and it was eventually at the University of Wisconsin where he and two researchers discovered that the order of nucleotides in our DNA determines how the body builds its amino acids. These amino acids then form proteins, which take care of essential cell functions. A few years later, Khorana went on to construct the first synthetic gene.
Google released three Doodles for today, depending on a user’s geographic location. Khorana’s Doodle was shared across the most countries, including in the US, Canada, Argentina, Peru, Australia, Japan, and Sweden. Those in Greece and Indonesia will see a Doodle about the 25th anniversary of Rafflesia arnoldii, an Indonesian plant nicknamed “the corpse flower” for its aroma. Meanwhile, those in the Middle East will see a Doodle celebrating the 82nd birthday of Arabic poet and radio host Farouk Shousha.
Khorana’s Doodle was drawn by Bangalore-based illustrator Rohan Dahotre. In early drafts of the Doodle shown below, Dahotre appears to have experimented with what sort of science-themed illustrations he could pair with Khorana’s profile.
GOOGLE is well known for it's Doodles - dedicated to notable figures in history.
January 9 will see Har Gobind Khorana get his very own Doodle in honour of his birthday - here's the lowdown.
Getty - Contributor Har Gobind Khorana is a Nobel Prize winning Indian-American biochemist
Who is Har Gobind Khorana and why is Google marking his 96th birthday?
On January 9, Google will celebrate the birthday of Har Gobind Khorana - a Nobel Prize winning Indian-American biochemist.
Dr Khorana, 96, will be honoured with a special Google Doodle.
He conducted research at universities in England, Switzerland, and Canada, and was awarded a Nobel Prize alongside two fellow researchers at the University of Wisconsin.
Together, they discovered that the order of nucleotides in our DNA determines which amino acids are built.
Google Google are honouring the scientist
These amino acids form proteins - which carry out essential cell functions in the body.
He later made a second scientific breakthrough when he constructed the first synthetic gene.
What is a Google Doodle?
In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.
The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.
In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.
Google Google celebrated the Autumn Equinox with a themed doodle
Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.
Among recent Doodles were ones commemorating German scientist Robert Koch, Jan Ingenhousz (who discovered photosynthesis) and the 50th anniversary of kids coding languages being introduced.
Earlier in the year, the search giant celebrated the 2017 Autumn Equinox , which marked the official ending of summer and the coming of autumn.
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Indian-American biochemist Har Gobind Khorana, known for his construction of the first synthetic gene and renowned research in nucleic acids and proteins, is being honored with a Google Doodle Tuesday, on what would have been Khorana’s 96th birthday.
Khorana’s work uncovered how a DNA’s genetic code determines protein synthesis — which dictates how a cell functions. That discovery earned khorana, along with two colleagues, the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.”
Several years later, Khorana created the first synthetic gene — a step that led to commercialized gene synthesis at businesses around the world.
(Original Caption) Nobel Prize Winners. Stockholm: The 1968 Nobel Prize recipients, five Americans and one Japanese where judged to have "most benefited mankind" in the past year. They appear here at the awards ceremony. Left to right: Professor H. Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, Professor Luis W. Alvarez, Dr. Marshall W. Nirenberg, Lars Onsager and Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. Bettmann—Bettmann Archive
Created by Bangalore-based illustrator Rohan Dahotre, Tuesday’s Google Doodle features Khorana conducting research.
Born in 1922 as the youngest of five children in a rural village that is now part of eastern Pakistan, Khorana learned to read and write with help from his father, according to the Nobel Prize’s biography of the biochemist.
With a number of scholarships, Khorana went on to earn a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1948.
He conducted his Nobel Prize-winning research on nucleotides at the University of Wisconsin, and he later became the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He died in 2011.
