Dr. H. Gobind Khorana and Dr. T. Mathai Jacob in laboratory

Editorial use only Dr Gobind Khorana (1922-2011, left), Indian American chemist and Dr. T. Mathai Jacob (right) at their laboratory at the Institute for Enzyme Research, University of Wisconsin in Madison. In the 1960s, Khorana began studying the nucleic acids which form a human's genetic code. He synthesised the triplet combinations of the four nucleic acids (bases) and determined each sequence for the 20 amino acids in the human body. He found that most have a pattern of three base codes, but that some had more. In 1970, Khorana was the first to synthesise an artificial gene. In 1976, he made a second one which was capable of functioning within a living cell. Khorana shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Marshall Nirenberg and Robert Holley for their work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. Photographed in 1964.