Masayasu Nomura - Biography

Masayasu Nomura

Masayau Nomura is the Grace Bell Professor of Biological Chemistry. He earned his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Tokyo in 1957. After completing Ph.D. he worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the United States.

He isolated a kind of RNA that receives information from a bacteriophage genome, then serves as an model for producing the proteins within the bacteriophage. Nomura came back to Japan as an assistant professor at the Osaka University Institute of Protein Research. In 1963 he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's Department of Genetics, and became full professor in 1966.

Professor Nomura together with his colleagues reconstituted the small ribosome subunits from purified RNA and dissociated ribosomal proteins in 1968. As a professor of genetics and biochemistry he did the same with the larger ribosomal subunit in 1970.

Masayau Nomura is a Member of American Academy of Arts and Science and National Academy of Sciences. He was assigned co-director of the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin in 1970.