Sutherland entered Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri in 1938. He received his Doctor of Medicine from it in 1942.
Career
Gallery of Earl Sutherland Jr.
1 Barnes Jewish Hospital Plaza, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA
Sutherland worked for one year as an intern at Barnes Hospital while continuing to do research in Cori’s laboratory.
Gallery of Earl Sutherland Jr.
1 Brookings Dr, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA
In 1945, Sutherland returned to Washington University in St. Louis to work there.
Gallery of Earl Sutherland Jr.
10900 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
Sutherland was offered the chair of the Department of Pharmacology at Western Reserve (now Case Western) University in Cleveland in 1953.
Gallery of Earl Sutherland Jr.
2201 West End Ave, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
In 1963 Sutherland became a professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a move which relieved him of his teaching duties and enabled him to devote more of his time to research.
Gallery of Earl Sutherland Jr.
1320 S Dixie Hwy, Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA
In 1973 Sutherland moved to the University of Miami.
In 1963 Sutherland became a professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a move which relieved him of his teaching duties and enabled him to devote more of his time to research.
(Cyclic AMP provides information pertinent to cyclic adeno...)
Cyclic AMP provides information pertinent to cyclic adenosine 3',5'-monophosphate (AMP), a regulatory agent that controls the rate of a number of cellular processes. This book discusses the heat-stable factor mediating the action of glucagon and epinephrine on the activation of liver phosphorylase.
Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. was an American prominent pharmacologist, biochemist, educator and author, who isolated cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cyclic AMP) and demonstrated its involvement in numerous metabolic processes that occur in animals.
Background
Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., the fifth of six children in his family, was born on November 19, 1915, in Burlingame, Kansas, a small farming community. His father, Earl Wilbur Sutherland, a Wisconsin native, had attended Grinnell College for two years and farmed in New Mexico and Oklahoma before settling in Burlingame to run a drygoods business, where Earl Wilbur, Jr., and his siblings worked. Sutherland’s mother, Edith M. Hartshorn, came from Missouri. She had been educated at a “ladies college,” and had received some nursing training. She taught Sutherland to swim at the age of five and then allowed him to go fishing by himself, a pastime that became a lifelong passion.
Education
While in high school, Sutherland excelled in sports such as football, basketball, and tennis. In 1933 he entered Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas. Supporting his studies by working as an orderly in a hospital, Sutherland graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1937.
Sutherland then entered Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri. There he enrolled in a pharmacology class taught by Carl Ferdinand Cori, who would share the 1947 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology with his wife Gerty Cori. Sutherland received his Doctor of Medicine in 1942.
Sutherland worked for one year as an intern at Barnes Hospital while continuing to do research in Cori’s laboratory. He then was called into service during World War II as a battalion surgeon under General George S. Patton. Later in the war he served in Germany as a staff physician in a military hospital.
In 1945, Sutherland returned to Washington University in St. Louis. He was unsure whether to continue practising medicine or to commit himself to a career in research. Sutherland later attributed his decision to stay in the laboratory to the example of his mentor Carl F. Cori. By 1953, Sutherland had advanced to the rank of associate professor at Washington University. During these years he came into contact with many leading figures in biochemistry, including Arthur Kornberg, Edwin G. Krebs, T. Z. Posternak, and others now recognized as among the founders of modern molecular biology. But Sutherland preferred, for the most part, to do his research independently.
While at Washington University, Sutherland began a project to understand how an enzyme known as phosphorylase breaks down glycogen, a form of the sugar stored in the liver. He also studied the roles of the hormone adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, and glucagon, secreted by the pancreas, in stimulating the release of energy-producing glucose from glycogen.
Sutherland was offered the chair of the Department of Pharmacology at Western Reserve (now Case Western) University in Cleveland in 1953. It was during the ten years he spent in Cleveland that Sutherland clarified an important mechanism by which hormones produce their effects. Scientists had previously thought that hormones acted on whole organs. Sutherland, however, showed that hormones stimulate individual cells in a process that takes place in two steps. First, a hormone attaches to specific receptors on the outside of the cell membrane. Sutherland called the hormone a “first messenger.” The binding of the hormone to the membrane triggers release of a molecule known as cyclic AMP within the cell. Cyclic AMP then goes on to play many roles in the cell’s metabolism, and Sutherland referred to the molecule as the “second messenger” in the mechanism of hormone action. In particular, Sutherland studied the effects of the hormone adrenaline, also called epinephrine, on liver cells. When adrenaline binds to liver cells, cyclic AMP is released and directs the conversion of sugar from a stored form into a form the cell can use.
Sutherland made two more important discoveries while at Western Reserve. He found that other hormones also spur the release of cyclic AMP when they bind to cells, in particular, the adrenocorticotropic hormone and the thyroid-stimulating hormone. This implied that cyclic AMP was a sort of universal intermediary in this process, and it explained why different hormones might induce similar effects. In addition, cyclic AMP was found to play an important role in the metabolism of one-celled organisms, such as the amoeba and the bacterium Escherichia coli, which do not have hormones. That cyclic AMP is found in both simple and complex organisms implies that it is a very basic and important biological molecule and that it arose early in evolution and has been conserved throughout millennia.
In 1963 Sutherland became professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a move which relieved him of his teaching duties and enabled him to devote more of his time to research.
At Vanderbilt Sutherland continued his work on cyclic AMP, supported by a Career Investigatorship awarded by the American Heart Association. Sutherland studied the role of cyclic AMP in the contraction of heart muscle. He and other researchers continued to discover physiological processes in different tissues and various animal species that are influenced by cyclic AMP, for example in brain cells and cancer cells. Sutherland also did research on a similar molecule known as cyclic GMP (guanosine 3’,5’-cyclic monophosphate). In the meantime, his pioneering studies had opened up a new field of research. By 1971, as many as two thousand scientists were studying cyclic AMP.
In 1973 Sutherland moved to the University of Miami. Shortly thereafter, he suffered a massive esophageal hemorrhage, and he died on March 9, 1974, after surgery for internal bleeding, at the age of fifty-eight.
(Cyclic AMP provides information pertinent to cyclic adeno...)
1971
Membership
Sutherland was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Society of Biological Chemists, American Chemical Society, American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Interests
Fishing
Sport & Clubs
Tennis, basketball, football
Connections
Sutherland married Mildred Rice in 1937, the same year that he graduated from Washburn College. The couple had two sons and a daughter.
In 1962, Sutherland divorced his first wife. A year later, when he became a professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University, Sutherland married Dr. Claudia Sebeste Smith, the assistant dean at the university and they were together for the remainder of Sutherland’s life.