TWO FROM MASS. WIN NOBEL FOR MEDICINE

Author: By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff

Date: Tuesday, October 12, 1993
Page: 1
Section: METRO

Phillip A. Sharp, 49, who turned down the MIT presidency three years ago to devote time to research, and Richard J. Roberts, 50, research director at New England Biolabs in Beverly, were informed by telephone calls from the Nobel committee in Stockholm at about 6:30 a.m. yesterday that they would share the $825,000 prize.

Roberts was up and working on his computer at his home in Wenham. Sharp was asleep at home in Newton.

"I had to have him repeat it," a beaming Sharp said at a news conference at MIT, where he is head of the Biology Department. He was cheered by students and colleagues as he raised a glass of champagne with his wife, Ann, and two of their three daughters. "Days don't get any better than this."

Roberts, who did postdoctoral work at Harvard, and was at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York when he made his discovery, said he couldn't imagine who would be calling that early when the phone rang at 6:25. "This is every scientist's dream come true," he told reporters at the Beverly center, where he was joined by his wife, Jeanne.

Sharp and Roberts did not work together; their discoveries were independent but parallel, occurring in 1977. The two men conceded their was some competition between them.

What they discovered -- Sharp as a junior faculty member at MIT, Roberts at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- was that genes in cells were not laid out as previously believed in a continuous strand of DNA. Rather, they are separated by "nonsense" or surplus DNA -- called introns -- that have no encoded message.

When genes splice, DNA turns into a kind of middle-man called messenger RNA, which edits out the "nonsense" information. The remaining genetic information is assembled in the proper order so it can be read by the
machinery in the cell that makes proteins, the building blocks of life.

Sharp and Roberts confirmed this process while inspecting the genetic material in adenovirus, a common-cold virus, with electron microscopes.

The discovery changed the way scientists understand the basic structure of cells, DNA and its re-arrangement and reproduction. It provided new insights into the development of diseases, such as hereditary disorders and particularly cancer, since some of those problems occur because of mishaps in the copying-and-editing process. The discovery also generally sped the revolution in biotechnology, the manipulation of genetic material.

Roberts said that at the time, the suggestion that DNA was anything but continuous "went totally contrary to dogma." He added: "I rather like that."

Roberts said he and a colleague, doing work funded in part by the National Cancer Institute, "stumbled" upon the discovery when they were looking for completely different results. Instead they found a series of "annoying" unexplained observations that they then tested further.

When asked what he would do with his share of the money, Roberts, a native of Derby, England, said he intended to use some of it to pay for his daughter's college tuition. He and his wife have two sons and two daughters.

Sharp, who knew Roberts when he worked at Cold Spring Harbor from 1970 to 1974 before coming to MIT, said he and colleagues working at MIT's Center for Cancer Research were "fortunate to be in the right place at the right time doing the right experiment."

But he added that his discovery was "obsolete" within a short time, as dozens of other laboratories performed tests and found similar results. "If we hadn't made this discovery, within six months there would have been 10 other labs making the discovery. The field was so primed to look at the structure of genes," he said.

Sharp said he slowly realized the enormity of his discovery. "Did I know that it was going to mushroom into the case where 99 percent of all our genes are expressed this way and become a whole field of science? No," he said. But, he said, "it was a little giggly as we were working through it."

When asked if the prize was confirmation that the field of biomedicine had eclipsed physics in terms of Nobel recipients, Sharp said, "I can't imagine a field of science that has changed so rapidly over 10 years."

He compared discoveries in biology today to discoveries in quantum mechanics and particle physics in the heydays of the '30s and '40s.

"This is a great era for the life sciences," said Robert J. Birgeneau, dean of science at MIT, adding that basic research in biology was helping fuel the biotechnology industry much as advances in computer science spawned the famed technology companies of Route 128.

Sharp, a Falmouth, Ky., native, said he planned to take his family to Stockholm to accept the award. "I'm going to celebrate this prize," he said.

Sharp is a prominent figure at MIT and well-regarded in the field of cancer research. He was tapped by trustees at MIT in 1990 to succeed Paul Grey as president, but he backed out in a surprise move, saying he preferred teaching and research.

"We're all fantastically pleased and proud of Phil," said Richard O. Hynes, professor of biology, director of the Center for Cancer Research and a Howard Hughes medical investigator. "It's a well-deserved prize."

Noting that Sharp was an untenured junior faculty member when he made his discovery, Hynes said it was important to note "that this sort of work is done by the young people" who must continue to be supported by universities, industry and government.

The delay in honoring discoveries -- in this case, more than 15 years -- is not unusual in the doling out of the Nobel prize. Officials at the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm sometimes let time pass to see how much of an impact discoveries have.

In awarding the prize, the Nobel Assembly said Sharp and Roberts' research ''has been of fundamental importance for today's basic research in biology, as well as for more medically oriented research concerning the development of cancer and other diseases."

FLINT ;10/11 NKELLY;10/14,11:45 NOBEL12