Alfred G. Gilman:
Alfred
G. Gilman (1941-) attended Yale University, majoring in Biochemistry. He worked
with Earl Sutherland at Case Western
Reserve University, where he worked on cyclic AMP in the thyroid gland. He developed
a simple assay technique for cyclic AMP while working in Marshall Nirenberg's
lab at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. He later taught at
the University of Virginia, and then became chair of the Department of Pharmacology
at the University of Texas, Dallas.
In 1980, Gilman and his team purified the transducer protein, called the G-protein
because it reacts with GTP. He used mutated leukemia cells to show that the
G-protein was necessary for signal transduction. For more information, click
on www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1994/gilman-autobio.html.