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• The Nobel Prize and Hormones: A Knowledge Revolution
• The First Step: Isolating Single Cells
• Robdell's Inspiration: Sutherland's Second Messenger
• A New Model for Message Transmission: Discovering the Role of GTP
• A Far-ranging Impact: Cholera, Inherited Night Blindness, McCune Albrights Syndrome
• The 1994 Nobel Prize
• Martin Rodbell, 1925-1998
• Acknowledgement

What causes that surge of energy you get when you are frightened? Before the work of Earl W. Sutherland, scientists knew that the adrenal gland produces a hormone called epinephrine, which travels to the body's cells and causes an increase in blood sugar. The sugar gives your body energy to react to stressful situations. But no one understood exactly how this hormone produced such an effect.

"I believe [Sutherland's] lecture had a great impact on a number of us at NIH." --Martin Rodbell

In the late 1950s, Sutherland investigated the effect of epinephrine on liver tissue. He and T.W. Rall discovered that the hormone—the "first" messenger—stimulates formation of a "second messenger" within cells. It is this second substance, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), that stimulates the breakdown of stored carbohydrate into sugar. Sutherland suggested that the actions of many other hormones could be explained in the same way.

In 1965, Martin Rodbell was inspired when Sutherland spoke at the NIH. Rodbell realized that his isolated fat cells were the perfect medium for further investigation of the mechanism of hormone action.

First Image: Courtesy of NY Academy of Sciences/G.A. Robinson
Second Image: Courtesy of Robert O. Scow, NIDDK

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