Krebs, Edwin Gerhard (1918-2009), was an American physician who, with American biochemist Edmond H. Fischer, made important discoveries about how cell proteins regulate muscle contractions. He and Fischer shared the 1992 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discoveries.
Krebs was born on June 6, 1918, in Lansing, Iowa. He majored in chemistry at the University of Illinois, graduated in 1940, and earned an M.D. degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1943. He completed his internship and part of his residency at a St. Louis hospital. In 1945 and 1946, during and after World War II, he served as a medical officer in the United States Navy. After leaving the Navy, he held a research fellowship in biological chemistry at Washington University from 1946 to 1948.
Krebs moved to Washington state in 1948, where he taught biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1948 to 1968. Fischer went to the university in 1953, and the two scientists soon began the work that eventually won the Nobel Prize. While studying muscle contractions, they discovered a process known as protein phosphorylation. Muscle contractions take place when a muscle enzyme called phosphorylase releases stored energy and causes the muscle to contract. Krebs and Fischer found that phosphorylase is switched on by another enzyme, one of a group of proteins known as protein kinases.
Krebs moved to California in 1968 to become chairman of the Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of California at Davis. In 1977, he returned to the University of Washington, serving as chairman of the Department of Pharmacology from 1977 to 1984 and as a professor of pharmacology from 1984 to 1991. He became an emeritus professor in 1991. Krebs died on Dec. 21, 2009.
