The Vitamin B12 transporter was the topic of an earlier blog post. Here I discuss Dorothy Hodgkin, “Nobel Prize 1964 Vitamin B12 (cobalamin)”. While the previous blog post on the vitamin B12 is biochemically important; the chemical history is important also. Dorothy Hodgkin became only the third woman to receive the Chemistry Nobel Prize (the first was awarded to Marie Curie). Dorothy Hodgkin contribution to science was in “X-ray crystallography of proteins”. The vitamin B12 (cobalamin) molecule has the formula: C63H88CoN14O14P. Cobalamin has the molecular weight of 1,355 g/mol. Shown in the diagram below, cobalamin is an intermediate in the “DNA methylation”. In the diagram below folate is vitamin B9.
