Protein Phosphorylation and Cellular Regulation II (Nobel Lecture)

It began at the start of the 1940s in the Cons' laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis: as a medical student Edwin Krebs participated in the investigations into phosphorylase, which had been found in two forms in the skeletal muscle of rabbits. Starting from the description of these findings—from which wrong conclusions had been drawn at the time—the two Nobel reviews present in a captivating way the complicated history of the research into protein phosphorylation. Today, it is known that many biochemical processes can be controlled by protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation. The signal cascade is shown on the right, which effects the regulation of glycogenolysis by adrenaline (PK = protein kinase).