《Nature》拒发诺奖得主文章被誉为史上最大错误

　　

生物通报道，文章被拒也许是科学家常遭遇的事情，文章遭拒很常见，诺奖得主的文章遭据你听过吗，近期The Scientist就爆出一件秘辛，1953年的诺奖得主Hans Krebs在1937年曾向Nature投稿遭拒。

 

如果说投稿遭拒，最完美的“报复”途径是什么？无疑，获得诺贝尔奖是最完美的途径。这样的传奇故事发生在Hans Krebs身上，他是1953年的诺贝尔奖医学和生理奖得主，主要的成就是发现柠檬酸循环（也称Krebs cycle），它是三大营养素（糖类、脂类、氨基酸）的最终代谢通路，又是糖类、脂类、氨基酸代谢联系的枢纽。

 

Hans Krebs生于德国，是犹太教徒，接受过医学与化学的专业训练，在20世纪30年代早期，纳粹统治期间被迫离开原本工作的Freiburg大学，逃亡英国，1935年加入谢菲尔德大学（University of Sheffield ），在谢菲尔德大学期间完成了他一生中最重要的发现，也就是获得诺奖的工作。

 

1937年3月，Krebs和同事在实验室中对一个刚刚杀死的鸽子进行试验，他们将鸽子的胸部肌肉放置在悬浮液中，然后观察接下来的半个小时内组织的代谢率的变化趋势。有趣的是，当他们在组织中加入柠檬酸盐的时候，鸽子的胸部组织的代谢率明显降低，存活时间可比正常情况下长3倍。其他的一些实验发现，在自然情况下，柠檬酸的循环式出现都伴随着能量的代谢过程（ATP的释放）。

 

Krebs于是将这一发现写成研究性论文，并投给《Nature》编辑部，遗憾的是，《Nature》编辑部拒绝以Article形式发表这篇文章，并且答复，这篇文章将作为后备式Letter文章，无限期延长发表期。

 

Letter from Nature declining to publish Krebs’s paper.

 

对于这件事，Krebs在回忆录中这样写道，在我已经发表50多篇专业论文的职业生涯中，我首次遭遇拒绝或者说半拒绝。其后，Krebs将这篇研究性论文投给荷兰的专业性杂志《Enzymologia》，2个月内这篇文章得以发表。

 

1988年，当时Krebs已经辞世7年（Krebs逝于1981年11月22日），Nature杂志匿名编辑在一篇公开信上指出，拒绝Krebs的文章是Nature杂志有史以来所犯的最大错误。

（生物通 张欢）

三羧酸循环（英语：Tricarboxylic acid cycle；TCA cycle）又柠檬酸循环（Citric acid cycle），是需氧生物体内普遍存在的代谢途径，因为在这个循环中几个主要的中间代谢物是含有三个羧基的柠檬酸，因此得名；或者以发现者汉斯·阿道夫·克雷伯命名为克雷伯氏循环，简称克氏循环（Krebs cycle）。

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Krebs生平简介

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs was born at Hildesheim, Germany, on August 25th, 1900. He is the son of Georg Krebs, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat surgeon of that city, and his wife Alma, née Davidson.

 

Krebs was educated at the Gymnasium Andreanum at Hildesheim and between the years 1918 and 1923 he studied medicine at the Universities of Göttingen, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, and Berlin. After one year at the Third Medical Clinic of the University of Berlin he took, in 1925, his M.D. degree at the University of Hamburg and then spent one year studying chemistry at Berlin. In 1926 he was appointed Assistant to Professor Otto Warburg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology at Berlin-Dahlem, where he remained until 1930.

 

In I930, he returned to hospital work, first at the Municipal Hospital at Altona under Professor L. Lichtwitz and later at the Medical Clinic of the University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau under Professor S. J. Thannhauser.

 

In June 1933, the National Socialist Government terminated his appointment and he went, at the invitation of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, to the School of Biochemistry, Cambridge, where he held a Rockefeller Studentship until 1934, when he was appointed Demonstrator of Biochemistry in the University of Cambridge.

 

In 1935, he was appointed Lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Sheffield, and in 1938 Lecturer-in-Charge of the Department of Biochemistry then newly founded there.

 

In 1945 this appointment was raised to that of Professor, and of Director of a Medical Research Council's research unit established in his Department. In 1954 he was appointed Whitley Professor of Biochemistry in the University of Oxford and the Medical Research Council's Unit for Research in Cell Metabolism was transferred to Oxford.

 

Professor Krebs' researches have been mainly concerned with various aspects of intermediary metabolism. Among the subjects he has studied are the synthesis of urea in the mammalian liver, the synthesis of uric acid and purine bases in birds, the intermediary stages of the oxidation of foodstuffs, the mechanism of the active transport of electrolytes and the relations between cell respiration and the generation of adenosine polyphosphates.

 

Among his many publications is the remarkable survey of energy transformations in living matter, published in 1957, in collaboration with H. L. Kornberg, which discusses the complex chemical processes which provide living organisms with high-energy phosphate by way of what is known as the Krebs or citric acid cycle.

 

Krebs was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1947. In 1954 the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, and in 1958 the Gold Medal of the Netherlands Society for Physics, Medical Science and Surgery were conferred upon him. He was knighted in 1958. He holds honorary degrees of the Universities of Chicago, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Paris, Glasgow, London, Sheffield, Leicester, Berlin (Humboldt University), and Jerusalem.

 

He married Margaret Cicely Fieldhouse, of Wickersley, Yorkshire, in 1938. They have two sons, Paul and John, and one daughter, Helen.