Olke C. Uhlenbeck is a biochemist

Biochemist

Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. Typical biochemists study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. The prefix of "bio" in "biochemist" can be understood as a fusion of "biological chemist."-Role:...

 presently at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

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He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 in 1993 and has published over 200 peer review

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

ed articles.
His research group has led to many breakthroughs in RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

, most notably the enzymatic synthesis of RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

s from synthetic DNA

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

 templates using T7 RNA polymerase

RNA polymerase

RNA polymerase is an enzyme that produces RNA. In cells, RNAP is needed for constructing RNA chains from DNA genes as templates, a process called transcription. RNA polymerase enzymes are essential to life and are found in all organisms and many viruses...

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Early Contributions

As a graduate student in Paul Doty's lab, Olke showed that the anticodon of tRNA was accessible to hybridization to oligonucleotides. Later, as a postdoc in Ignacio Tinoco, Jr.

Ignacio Tinoco, Jr.

Ignacio Tinoco, Jr. is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he has held since 1956 .Ignacio Tinoco received a Bachelor's degree from the University of New Mexico in 1951, and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1954. He...

's lab he helped define an original model for RNA secondary structure prediction

Secondary structure prediction

Secondary structure prediction is a set of techniques in bioinformatics that aim to predict the secondary structures of proteins and nucleic acid sequences based only on knowledge of their primary structure...

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Contributions from the Uhlenbeck Lab

Olke is a longstanding contributor to RNA biochemistry. His group has shown many important findings as well as developed important tools for RNA biochemists. Notable contributions include: