Richard J. Roberts

British biochemist Richard J. Roberts is renowned for discovering the process of RNA splicing and the discontinuous, split-gene structure of eukaryotic genes. His research revealed that genes could be separated by non-coding segments of DNA. These non-coding segments are scientifically known as introns.

Roberts shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with American scientist Phillip Sharp. Both scientists independently made the exact same discovery of split genes while working with the adenovirus. Their findings fundamentally altered the understanding of genetics in higher organisms.

Richard J. Roberts was born in 1943 in Derby, England. He later moved to the United States to work at the prominent Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. It was at this famous research facility that he conducted his Nobel-winning research in the late 1970s.

The discovery of split genes radically changed the understanding of how genetic information is stored and expressed in higher organisms. It helped explain how complex human cells could produce a vast array of different proteins from a relatively limited number of genes. This process is achieved through alternative RNA splicing.