Sidney Altman and Thomas Cech first discovered catalytic RNA molecules, RNase P and group II intron ribozymes, in 1989 and won the Nobel Prize for their discovery.
Lerman's lab crew included at least one Nobel prize winner, Sidney Altman, and another, Tom Maniatis, who also became one of the leading molecular biologists of his time.
The first ribozymes were discovered in the 1980s by Thomas R. Cech, who was studying RNA splicing in the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila and Sidney Altman, who was working on the bacterial RNase P complex.
Later, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, Altman started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme.
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Altman's mother was from Białystok in Poland, and had come to Canada with her sister at the age of eighteen, learning English and working in a textile factory to earn money to bring the rest of their family to Quebec.
The couple had two children - Thomas, a professor of mathematics, and Ann, a biochemist, writer and translator, who married Sidney Altman, a professor at Yale University.
Thomas Robert Cech (born December 8, 1947 in Chicago) is a chemist who shared the 1989 Nobel prize in chemistry with Sidney Altman, for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA.
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Cech's work has been recognised by many awards and prizes including: lifetime Professorship by the American Cancer Society (1987),the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University(1988), the Heineken Prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1988), the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1988), the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1989, shared with Sidney Altman) and the National Medal of Science (1995).
Robert Altman | Sidney Poitier | Sidney Lumet | Sidney Nolan | Sidney Bechet | Philip Sidney | Sidney Crosby | Albert Sidney Johnston | Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea | Sidney | Sylvia Sidney | Sidney Reilly | Sidney Altman | Dennis Altman | Sidney Paget | Sidney Howard | Sidney Colvin | Henry Sidney | Sidney Smith | Sidney Lee | Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin | Sidney Cotton | Sidney Blumenthal | Donald Sidney-Fryer | William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L'Isle | Sidney Sheldon | Sidney Robertson Cowell | Sidney Rigdon | Sidney Olcott | Sidney, Nebraska |
At about the same time, Sidney Altman, a professor at Yale University, was studying the way tRNA molecules are processed in the cell when he and his colleagues isolated an enzyme called RNase-P, which is responsible for conversion of a precursor tRNA into the active tRNA.