Sydney Brenner

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Sydney Brenner, CH FRS (born January 13, 1927) is a South African biologist and 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate.

Brenner was born in a small town, Germiston (South Africa). His parents were Jewish immigrants. His father came to South Africa from Lithuania in 1910, and his mother, from Latvia, in 1922.^[1] Educated at Germiston High School and the University of the Witwatersrand, he went on to complete a DPhil at Oxford University, at Exeter College.

Brenner made seminal contributions to the emerging field of molecular biology in the 1960s, notably in the elucidation of the triplet code of protein translation through the Crick, Brenner et al. experiment of 1961, which discovered frameshift mutations. This insight provided early elucidation of the genetic code. Brenner then focused on establishing Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of animal development including neural development. Brenner chose this 1 millimeter-long soil roundworm mainly because it is simple, is easy to grow in bulk populations, and turned out be quite convenient for genetic analysis. The title of his Nobel lecture on December 2002, "Nature's Gift to Science" is a homage to this modest nematode, and he considered that having chosen the right organism turned out to be as important as having addressed the right problems to work on. ^[2] For the latter work he shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston. In recognition of his pioneering role in starting what is now a global research community that work on C. elegans, another closely related nematode was given the scientific name Caenorhabditis brenneri ^[3].

Brenner founded the Molecular Sciences Institute and is currently associated with the Salk Institute, the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Known for his penetrating scientific insight and acerbic wit, Brenner for many years penned a regular column ("Loose Ends") in the journal Current Biology; he wrote "A Life In Science" (ISBN 0-9540278-0-9) paperback published by Biomed Central Ltd. in 2001.

Brenner was awarded the National Science and Technology Medal by A*STAR, Singapore on 11 October 2006 for his distinguished and strategic contributions to the development of Singapore’s scientific capability and culture, particularly in the biomedical sciences sector.^[4]