Thomas Robert Cech:
Thomas Robert Cech is an American biochemist and Nobel laureate.
Birth:
December 8, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois
Claim to Fame:
Cech is an American biochemist who shares the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman for their discoveries involving the catalytic properties of RNA. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) was known to pass on genetic information, but both men discovered it could also work as an enzyme to catalyze chemical reactions between cells. Cech was also part of the team that discovered telomerase reverse transcription (TERT) responsible for regulating the length of telemeres. Telemeres make up the end of chromosomes.
