Editing Martin Rodbell (section)

==Biography==
Rodbell was born in [[Baltimore, Maryland]], the son of Shirley (née Abrams) and Milton Rodbell, a grocer.<ref name="google">{{cite book|title=American National Biography: Supplement 2|author1=Betz, P.R.|author2=Carnes, M.C.|author3=American Council of Learned Societies|date=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=9780195222029|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wZczV8ZxgL4C|page=478|access-date=2015-05-15}}</ref> His family was [[Jews|Jewish]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/june96/rodbell2.html|title=The 'G' Man - From Grocery Delivery Boy to the U-Dub|website=www.washington.edu|access-date=2019-08-31}}</ref> After graduating from the [[Baltimore City College]] high school, he entered [[Johns Hopkins University]] in 1943, with interests in [[biology]] and [[existentialism|French existential literature]]. In 1944, his studies were interrupted by his military service as a [[U.S. Navy]] [[radio]] operator during [[World War II]]. He returned to Hopkins in 1946 and received his B.S. in biology in 1949. In 1950, he married [[Barbara Ledermann|Barbara Charlotte Ledermann]], a former friend of [[Margot Frank]], diarist [[Anne Frank]]'s older sister. Martin and Barbara had four children. Rodbell received his Ph.D. in [[biochemistry]] at the [[University of Washington]] in 1954. He did post-doctoral work at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]] from 1954 to 1956. In 1956, Rodbell accepted a position as a research biochemist at the National Heart Institute, part of the [[National Institutes of Health]], in [[Bethesda, Maryland]]. In 1985, Rodbell became Scientific Director of the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in [[Research Triangle Park, North Carolina]] where he worked until his retirement in 1994. He was also adjunct professor of Cell Biology at [[Duke University]] (from 1991 to 1998)<ref>''Bulletins of Duke University'' (from 1991 to 1998), published by [[Duke University]]</ref> and adjunct professor of pharmacology at the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]].<ref>{{cite journal|title=Nobel Laureate Martin Rodbell Dies|journal=[[Environmental Health Perspectives]]|date=January 1999|volume=107|issue=1|page=A9|pmc=1566302|doi=10.1289/ehp.99107a9|pmid=9872722}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Barnes|first1=Bart|title=Nobel Winner Martin Rodbell Dies|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1998/12/11/nobel-winner-martin-rodbell-dies/9f0cd772-0112-4b59-b57d-964100fcfda9/|access-date=31 December 2015|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|date=December 11, 1998}}</ref> He died in Chapel Hill of multiple organ failure after an extended illness.
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===Research===
Reflecting the increasingly common analogies between [[computer science]] and [[biology]] in the 1960s, Rodbell believed that the fundamental information processing systems of both computers and biological [[organism]]s were similar. He asserted that individual cells were analogous to cybernetic systems made up of three distinct molecular components: discriminators, [[transducer]]s, and [[amplifier]]s (otherwise known as effectors). The discriminator, or cell [[receptor (biochemistry)|receptor]], receives information from outside the cell; a cell [[transduction (physiology)|transducer]] processes this information across the [[cell membrane]]; and the amplifier intensifies these signals to initiate reactions within the cell or to transmit information to other cells.

In December 1969 and early January 1970, Rodbell was working with a laboratory team that studied the effect of the hormone [[glucagon]] on a rat [[liver]] membrane receptor—the cellular discriminator that receives outside signals. Rodbell discovered that ATP ([[adenosine triphosphate]]) could reverse the binding action of glucagon to the cell receptor and thus dissociate the glucagon from the cell altogether. He then noted that traces of GTP ([[guanosine triphosphate]]) could reverse the binding process almost one thousand times faster than ATP. Rodbell deduced that GTP was probably the active biological factor in dissociating glucagon from the cell's receptor, and that GTP had been present as an impurity in his earlier experiments with ATP. This GTP, he found, stimulated the activity in the guanine nucleotide protein (later called the G-protein), which, in turn, produced profound metabolic effects in the cell. This activation of the G-protein, Rodbell postulated, was the "[[second messenger]]" process that [[Earl W. Sutherland]] had theorized. In the language of signal transduction, the G-protein, activated by GTP, was the principal component of the transducer, which was the crucial link between the discriminator and the amplifier. Later, Rodbell postulated, and then provided evidence for, additional G-proteins at the cell receptor that could inhibit and activate transduction, often at the same time. In other words, cellular receptors were sophisticated enough to have several different processes going on simultaneously.