Biologjia Online

Severo Ochoa (1905–1993) was born in Luarca, Spain and became interested in biology while in high school. Because there were few graduate programs in the biological sciences in Spain at that time, he had to enroll in the Medical School at the University of Madrid to study biology. Fortunately, during his second year, Ochoa was offered the opportunity to do research. His first experiment, isolating creatinine from urine, stimulated his interest in the function and metabolism of creatine and creatinine in the body. As a result, he and José G. Valdecasas came up with a simple micromethod for the determination of creatine in muscle. They submitted a paper on this method to the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), and to their delight, it was published in 1929 (1). Said Ochoa, "Not even in my wildest dreams could I have dreamt that, years later, I would become a member of the editorial board of the JBC and serve as President of the American Society of Biological Chemists (now the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)" (2).1