Reiji Okazaki

was a pioneer Japanese molecular biologist, known for his research on DNA replication and especially for describing the role of Okazaki fragments along with his wife Tsuneko.

Okazaki was born in Hiroshima, Japan. He graduated in 1953 from Nagoya University, and worked as a professor there after 1963. He died of leukemia in Japan in 1975 at the age of 44 after traveling to the United States and Canada; he had been heavily irradiated in Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was dropped.

Okazaki Fragments In 1968, Reiji and Tsuneko Okazaki discovered the way in which the lagging strand of DNA is replicated via fragments, now called Okazaki fragments.

Their experiments used E. coli. After introducing 3T-thymidine for only ten seconds to E. coli during DNA replication, they placed the sample in a test tube of alkaline sucrose.