Discovery and isolation of vitamin B12
Descubrimiento y aislamiento de la vitamina B12
- Date
- 1926-1956 · confidence high
- Place
- Rahway, New Jersey, United States
- Credited to
- Karl A. Folkers and Mary Shaw Shorb (US); Alexander Todd and E. Lester Smith (UK); Dorothy Hodgkin (structure, 1956)
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Following Minot and Murphy's 1926 finding that liver cured pernicious anemia, teams at Merck in the US and Glaxo in the UK almost simultaneously isolated the active factor, vitamin B12, in 1948; its structure was solved by Dorothy Hodgkin via X-ray crystallography in 1956.
Isolation was achieved almost simultaneously and independently in the United States (Merck) and the United Kingdom (Glaxo), using a bioassay with the bacterium Lactobacillus (LLD assay).
What it led to
- effective treatment of pernicious anemia
- understanding of cobalamin's role in human metabolism
- the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Dorothy Hodgkin for determining its structure