Joan P. Folkes (born 1927) was a scientist who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1956.[1] Along with Ernest Gale,[2]: 413 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.[3]: 162
Folkes and Gale were also the first to demonstrate cell-free protein production in a crude cell extract.[4][5] 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.[6][7] At the time, they called the chemical 'incorporation factors'[8] because they were fragments of nucleic acids that encouraged amino acids to form into proteins.[9]
^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. ISBN978-0-87969-750-1. 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.
^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.
^"Duplicating Life Chemicals". The Science News-Letter. 66 (4): 50. 1954. ISSN0096-4018. JSTOR3934208. 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.
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