Howard Temin; Won Nobel Prize for Research on Genetics

Nobel Prize winner Howard Temin, a cancer researcher who helped change the way scientists look at genetics and became a tireless opponent of smoking, has died of lung cancer at age 59.

Temin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specialized in cancer and AIDS research, made a brief public announcement in 1992 to discuss his illness and to note that he had never been a cigarette smoker. Temin, who spent many of his final years campaigning against smoking, died Wednesday of adenocarcinoma, a form of cancer that is not caused by smoking.

He won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1975 when he was honored with his Caltech professor, Renato Dulbecco, and David Baltimore of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their research on possible links between viruses and cancer. Temin also received the National Medal of Science in 1992.

Temin’s work in helping discover the enzyme reverse transcriptase led to acceptance of his theory that some genetic reproduction is the reverse of what scientists had thought.

Temin said some viruses carry their genetic information in ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which is then copied into the viruses’ deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. The theory challenged the belief that DNA always passed information to RNA, rather than the other way around.

But the discovery of the reverse transcriptase enzyme proved his theory was right.

The enzyme also played a key role in identifying the AIDS virus and has been crucial to genetic engineering, which has produced such drugs as human insulin and tpa, a clot-dissolving substance that can stop heart attacks.

Temin joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison staff in 1960.

The Philadelphia native began his career with the study of chickens and how viruses affect them. From those studies, he learned that some genetic reproduction is the reverse of what scientists had thought normal.