Edward Herbert
University of Oregon
January 28, 1926 - February 19, 1987
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Scientific Discipline: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1987)
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Edward Herbert was one of the first scientists to research neurochemistry. Herbert made three major contributions to our understanding of cellular physiology and the synthesis of peptides within the nervous and endocrine systems. First, he discovered the enzyme responsible for the addition of the CCA (cytosine-cytosine-adenine) tail, or the amino acid sequence attached to transfer RNA (tRNA). He went on to show that this sequence regulated amino acid acceptor activity for tRNA. Along with J. L. Roberts, he discovered a polyprotein they named pro-opiomelano cortin, or POMC, containing ACTH, beta-endorphin, and several other stress hormones. He then established the processing of POMC within pituitary cells by defining its glycosylation and proteolytic cleavage steps. He also found that tissue-specific expression of POMC was controlled by differences in processing enzymes, which replaced the previous theories of RNA splicing and selective expression of different POMC genes within different tissues. Lastly, Herbert initiated the use of synthetic DNA probes to screen cDNA clone banks and messenger RNA (mRNA) from the brain. He used this technique to show that the sixteen opioid peptides were derived from three precursors: POMC, pro-enkephalin A, and pro-enkephalin B.
Herbert received his B.S. degree in 1949 from the University of Connecticut and then his Ph.D. in cellular physiology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1953. He went on to teach biology as well as chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1955 to 1962. In 1963, he left the east coast to become an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon. He became the first director of the Institute of Advanced Biomedical Research at Oregon Health Sciences University in 1983. In the same year, he became a member of the board of directors for the Hereditary Disease Foundation and also received the first Mark O. Hatfield Award and Lectureship from Oregon Health Services University.
