Elizabeth Beach Keller

Elizabeth Beach Keller (19181997) was an American biochemist. She is noted for her discoveries on protein formation. These included her development of the cloverleaf model of transfer RNA (ribonucleic acid), which shows how transfer RNA helps in directing the genetic information within the DNA to form proteins. This model was included in Robert W. Holley's set of works that earned him a share of the Nobel Prize.

Biography Keller was born Elizabeth Waterbury Beach on December 28, 1918, in Diongloh, Fujian province, China. Her formal education began when the family relocated to the United States. She spent two years at Oberlin College before obtaining her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Chicago. Keller's research paved the way for more productive in vitro experiments on protein synthesis after she introduced the use of radioactive leucine in the process. Her and Zamecnik's work with Mahlon Hoagland also led to the discovery of the initial stages of protein synthesis.

In 1965, she joined Cornell University and worked with Holley, who was studying the transfer-RNA structure. She found that the workings of transfer RNA is best shown through the cloverleaf model and had demonstrated it using pipe cleaners and pieces of Velcro. The cloverleaf model itself was one of the secondary structures for the first tRNA sequence that she developed with James Penswick, a student member of the Holley group. The study would later earn for Holley the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968.

Works

The effect of guanosine diphosphate and triphosphate on the incorporation of labeled amino acids into proteins (1956) Intron Splicing: A Conserved Internal Signal in Introns of Animal Pre-mRNAs (1984) The Biosynthesis of RNA's: Mechanisms and Controls (1985) Effects of therapeutic touch on tension headache pain (1986)