Sutherland, Earl Wilbur, Jr. (1915-1974), was an American pharmacologist, biochemist, and physiologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1971 for his discovery of the ways hormones act and the discovery of a molecule called 3,5- adenosine monophosphate, also known as cyclic AMP. Cyclic AMP influences the actions of hormones on body processes. See Hormone .
Sutherland researched the way in which glycogen (a starchlike carbohydrate stored in the liver and muscle) is converted into glucose (a type of sugar used as a source of energy). He investigated the function of the hormones glucagon and epinephrine (also called adrenalin) in this process, and concluded that they regulate the conversion of glycogen to glucose. During periods of stress, the adrenal glands release epinephrine. Epinephrine mobilizes the blood sugar and causes cells to produce cyclic AMP, which then activates phosphorylase, the enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of glycogen to glucose. Cyclic AMP is thus a “second messenger,” because it occurs as an intermediate step in the process.
Sutherland was born in Burlingame, Kansas. He studied medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he later became associate professor of biochemistry. In 1953, he became the director of the department of medicine at Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) University in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1963, he became professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and, in 1973 and 1974, he was a member of the faculty of the University of Miami Medical School.
