Severo Ochoa won the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering mechanisms involved in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid.
Ochoa’s work identified polynucleotide phosphorylase, an enzyme that can synthesize RNA-like chains from nucleotide building blocks. The discovery provided an important experimental route for studying how nucleic acids are assembled.
Ochoa shared the 1959 Medicine Nobel with Arthur Kornberg. Kornberg was honored for discovering the mechanisms of biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Their awards recognized complementary advances in understanding nucleic-acid replication and synthesis.
Polynucleotide phosphorylase later became valuable in molecular biology, including the preparation of defined RNA sequences. Ochoa’s research helped establish the enzyme-based framework that connected biochemical reactions with genetic information.