Palade, << puh LAHD ee, >> George Emil (1912-2008), a Romanian-born American biologist, won the 1974 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He shared the prize with Christian de Duve of Belgium and Albert Claude of the United States for their pioneer work in cell biology (see Claude, Albert ; De Duve, Christian René ).
Palade’s doctoral thesis focused on the anatomy of the nephron (a structure in the kidney) of the common dolphin. He later moved into the field of microtomy, the preparation of tissues for examination under a microscope. He developed a technique called the sucrose method to prepare liver tissue for examination.
Palade’s principal achievements were in the fields of tissue preparation and electron microscopy. During the 1950’s, Palade improved a technique known as cell fractionation, which could separate newly discovered components of a cell for study. However, he also used other techniques such as radioautography (the use of rays from a radioactive substance to create an image of tissue on sensitized material) to analyze subcellular structures. Palade conducted a great deal of research into animal and plant cell structures, such as the endoplasmic reticulum. The endoplasmic reticulum is an organelle in which many of the cell’s proteins are made.
In particular, Palade conducted a detailed biochemical and structural analysis of the pancreas of the guinea pig. He discovered that the function of microsomes (tiny structures in the cytoplasm of cells) was not a matter of metabolism, as scientists had believed, but of internal cell transport. He also discovered that microsomes had a high ribonucleic acid (RNA) content, and so they came to be called ribosomes. His research demonstrated that RNA strands in ribosomes attached to the endoplasmic reticulum are the site of protein production. He also showed that the resultant proteins are carried in the vacuoles (small sacs in the cell’s cytoplasm) and released into the fluid outside the cell.
Palade was born in Iasi, Romania, on Nov. 19, 1912. He studied at the University of Bucharest, where he later became professor of anatomy. In 1946, he immigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1952. In 1958, he became professor of cytology at Rockefeller Institute in New York City. He later moved on to Yale University Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut. From 1990 until his retirement in 2001, he served as professor of cellular and molecular biology at the University of California at San Diego. He died on Oct. 7, 2008.
