Protein Cleaning

The Body’s Protein Cleaning Machine

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Published: June 18, 2012

Enlarge This ImageWhen Dr. Avram Hershko, 74, a biochemist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and a winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was recently asked to name the most important fact of his life, he answered: “That I love my three grandchildren. For two, three days every week, I take them to dance class, sport and school. I am completely in their lives.”

Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Avram Hershko, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Among top scientists, responses to such a question might well focus on prizes they’ve won or the import of their research. For Dr. Hershko, whose family was separated and sent to forced labor in World War II, family life trumps worldly accomplishments.
Yet Dr. Hershko’s scientific contributions are remarkable. His discovery of how individual cells destroy and eliminate malfunctioning proteins is a crucial component of efforts to unlock the mysteries of cancer and neurodegenerative disease.

We spoke when he visited New York City this spring. A condensed and edited version of the conversation follows.

How did the way that proteins are broken down within cells — the topic for which you won the Nobel Prize — become your life’s work?

I bumped into it by accident in 1969. At the time, I was a young Israeli biochemist with a fellowship to do postdoctoral studies with Dr. Gordon Tomkins, at the University of California, San Francisco.