Wang Ying-Lai (1907 – 2001)
A biochemist recognized as the first scientist to engineer synthetic insulin, died in his sleep on 5 May 2001 in a hospital in Shanghai, China. He was 93 years old.
Wang was born in 1907 in the remote village of Shanhou on the island of Jinmen (Quemoy), off the coast of Fujian, China. Although he lost his father at the age of two, and his mother when he was
six, he pursued his education vigorously against all odds during a period of wars and political turmoil in China in the 1920s and 1930s. After graduating from Jinling University (now the University of Nanjing) with a degree in chemistry, he went to the University of Cambridge in 1938. His mentor, David Keilin, quickly recognized his talent, and Wang earned his PhD in 1941. He was invited to stay at Cambridge to teach and to continue his research at the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, moving to Cambridge's Molteno Institute in 1944.
Synthetic Bovine Insulin - the first total synthesis protein
When the Second World War ended, Wang decided to return to China, against the advice of both Keilin and Professor Joseph Needham, the foremost historian of Chinese science. Wang's aim was to help the country to develop a world-class research base in science, and his first job was a research professorship at the Medical College of the National Central University. In 1948, he became a senior member of the Medical Research Institute of what was then the Academia Sinica (now the Chinese Academy of Science) — the most prestigious research institution in China. Shortly after the liberation of China in 1949, he was appointed deputy director of the newly established Institute of Physiology and Biochemistry of the Academia Sinica of the People's Republic of China.
From 1958 until he retired in 1984, Wang founded and headed the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academia Sinica in Shanghai. It was in this capacity, according to an essay he wrote in the People's Daily in 1991, that he recruited several prominent Chinese scientists who were until then working in other countries. Over several years he helped to plan and develop the national agenda for biochemistry and molecular biology. He also set up several national training programmes to recruit and train hundreds of young scientists. He founded, and was for many years the editor-in-chief of, China's premier journal, the Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
Experimental Records of Total Synthesis of Crystalline Bovine Insulin
By far the most significant of Wang's scientific contributions was the synthesis of crystalline insulin. This hormone, produced in the pancreas, controls the sugar content in the blood and is widely used to treat diabetes. Under Wang's leadership, scientists in the 'collaboration team on the synthesis of insulin' achieved the synthesis in 1965. Although similar attempts were being made in the United States and Europe, Wang's group was ahead of the game.
Beginning the project in August 1958, the first task of Wang's team was to synthesize the 20 amino acids — the fundamental building blocks of any protein. This enormous job also involved the separation of the D- and L- stereoisomers of each amino acid (only the L-isomers are found in proteins). Then, using these building blocks, the team produced the so-called A and B amino- acid chains of insulin. Wang later said that the greatest challenge was to align the six cysteine amino acids so that they would form the correct disulphide bonds — one within the A chain, and two between the chains. Any mismatch would lead to an inactive product. Biological assays and X-ray crystallography confirmed the authenticity of the chemically synthesized insulin.
Madam Thatcher visit Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry in 1982
The total synthesis of insulin from chemically synthesized amino acids represented a conceptual breakthrough in converting lifeless chemicals to a protein with biological activity. This was accomplished before the development of solid-state peptide synthesis, for which R. Bruce Merrifield was to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984. In the 1970s, a team headed by Wang achieved the total chemical synthesis of another biologically significant molecule — a transfer RNA (tRNA), which is involved in protein synthesis in vivo. This led to Wang's lifelong interest in tRNA synthetases, the enzymes that produce tRNAs.
The total synthesis of insulin from chemically synthesized amino acids represented a conceptual breakthrough in converting lifeless chemicals to a protein with biological activity. This was accomplished before the development of solid-state peptide synthesis, for which R. Bruce Merrifield was to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984. In the 1970s, a team headed by Wang achieved the total chemical synthesis of another biologically significant molecule — a transfer RNA (tRNA), which is involved in protein synthesis in vivo. This led to Wang's lifelong interest in tRNA synthetases, the enzymes that produce tRNAs.