Google Doodle pays tributes to Har Gobind Khorana

New Delhi: This time the Google Doodle has honoured a well-known scientist and Nobel Prize winner known for his research work on the DNA and for constructing the first synthetic gene. The search engine launched a doodle on the occasion of Indian-American scientist, Dr Har Gobind Khorana’s 96th birth anniversary.

With research spanning decades, Dr Khorana passed away in 2011 in Massachusetts at the age of 89.

Born in Raipur, Dr Khorana completed his bachelor’s and masters degree from Lahore and later went on to get his PhD from UK. He became an expert on the chemical synthesis of nucleic acids and proteins while he was working under Professor Vladimir Prelog in Zurich for one year.

Dr Khorana later shifted to Canada in 1952 where he worked at the University of British Columbia. In 1960, Khorana moved to the US and continued his research at the University of Wisconsin. He took up American citizenship in 1966. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Robert W. Holley and Marshall W. Nirenberg for “their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis” in 1968.

Dr Khorana invented the first artificial gene in 1972. Later in 1976, he announced that the artificial gene created by him functioned successfully within a bacterial cell.