Kjell Kleppe (1934-1988) was a Norwegian biochemist and molecular biologist who was a pioneer in the

PCR PCR or pcr may refer to: Science * Phosphocreatine, a phosphorylated creatine molecule * Principal component regression, a statistical technique Medicine * Polymerase chain reaction ** COVID-19 testing, often performed using the polymerase chain r ...

technique and built the first laboratory in the country for bio and gene technology. Kjell Kleppe earned a B.S. degree from the University of Oslo (1955-1958) and a Ph.D. in enzymology from the University of Nebraska, USA (1958-1963). Kleppe conducted research at many prestigious universities, including Cambridge and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, and in 1966, he joined the University of Bergen, where he founded Felleslaboratorium for bioteknologi (FLB), the first gene technology laboratory in Norway with Professor

Curt Endresen Kurt is a male given name of Germanic or Turkish origin. ''Kurt'' or ''Curt'' originated as short forms of the Germanic Conrad, depending on geographical usage, with meanings including counselor or advisor. In Turkish, Kurt means "Wolf" and i ...

. He became a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS) in 1984. During his postdoctoral career in the United States, he put forward the idea of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Kleppe discovered the concepts for PCR while working in the laboratory of 1968 Nobel Prize winner, Har Gobind Khorana at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Two years after he published the founding principles of PCR, Kleppe and Khorana published a "process called repair replication for synthesizing short DNA duplexes and single-stranded DNA by polymerases." Because of his initial discoveries and ideas, PCR can now be applied to forensics, genetics, and diagnostics. Recently, its most notable use is in connection to COVID-19 diagnostics, as it is able to identify bacteria and viruses.

References

1934 births 1988 deaths Norwegian biochemists Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters {{biologist-stub