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Joan Folkes

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Female Nobel Nominee

Joan P. Folkes (born 1927) was a scientist who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1956. Along with Ernest Gale, she demonstrated that nucleic acids have an organizing or controlling role in protein synthesis. In his 2005 book, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger discussed the work of Folkes and Gale and how they revealed a connection between the levels of nucleic acids in cells and the rate that proteins were made.

Folkes and Gale were also the first to demonstrate cell-free protein production in a crude cell extract. During this work, they broke open cells of Staphylococcus aureus by vibration and the demonstrated that a template chemical existed, now recognized as DNA, that enables the production of proteins even in the absence of living cells. At the time, they called the chemical 'incorporation factors' because they were fragments of nucleic acids that encouraged amino acids to form into proteins.

Career

She worked at the Medical Research Council Unit of Chemical Microbiology in Cambridge, England.

Selected publications

References

  1. "Nomination archive". NobelPrize.org. 1 April 2020. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
  2. ^ Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg (1996). "Comparing Experimental Systems: Protein Synthesis in Microbes and in Animal Tissue at Cambridge (Ernest F. Gale) and at the Massachusetts General Hospital (Paul C. Zamecnik), 1945-1960". Journal of the History of Biology. 29 (3): 387–416. doi:10.1007/BF00127381. ISSN 0022-5010. JSTOR 4331405. PMID 11618363. S2CID 31015381. Gale...having very few collaborators and technicians (among whom Joan Folkes was the most important during the period that was surveyed here).
  3. Rheinburger, Hans-Jorg (2005). "Ernest F. Gale and Protein Synthesis:The Difficulties of Analysing a Complex System". In Witkowski, Jan (ed.). The inside story : DNA to RNA to protein. Woodbury, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. pp. 161–169. ISBN 978-0-87969-750-1. In 1952, back in Cambridge, Gale shifted his research agenda. In collaboration with his skilled technician Joan P. Folkes, he began to focus on the relationships between nucleic acids and protein synthesis.
  4. Gale, E. F.; Folkes, J. P. (26 June 1954). "Effect of nucleic acids on protein synthesis and amino-acid incorporation in disrupted staphylococcal cells". Nature. 173 (4417): 1223–1227. Bibcode:1954Natur.173.1223G. doi:10.1038/1731223a0. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 13176417. S2CID 4168382.
  5. Chicago : Spencer Press (1951). The American peoples encyclopedia yearbook: 1955 (events of 1954). Chicago: Spencer Press. p. 219. A duplication of some of the chemical properties of life outside living cells was demonstrated by Drs. E.F. Gale and Joan P. Folkes of the University of Cambridge, England.
  6. "Duplicating Life Chemicals". The Science News-Letter. 66 (4): 50. 1954. ISSN 0096-4018. JSTOR 3934208. The research team, Dr. E.F. Gale and Joan P. Folkes of the Medical Research Country Unit for Chemical Microbiology, report their experimental work on protein synthesis at the University of Cambridge, England.
  7. "Protein Factory". Scientific American. 191 (4). Nature America, Inc.: 49 1954.
  8. Lorenzano, Pablo; Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg; Galles, Eduardo Ortiz and Carlos Delfino (27 September 2010). HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY -Volume II. EOLSS Publications. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-84826-324-6.
  9. Nierhaus, Knud H.; Wilson, Daniel (10 July 2009). Protein Synthesis and Ribosome Structure: Translating the Genome. John Wiley & Sons. p. 20. ISBN 978-3-527-61638-1.


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