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Abstract
In the 1950s, Giulio Cantoni solved one of the major problems in biochemistry: the mechanisms of methylation. At the time, scientists knew that molecules such as nucleic acids and neurotransmitters were methylated, but they did not know how. "They only knew there had to be active methyl groups somewhere", former colleague and US National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist emeritus Louis Sokoloff told The Lancet. Cantoni was the one who found that the source of the methyl group was methionine, that there was an enzyme called methionine-activating enzyme that catalysed methionine's reaction with ATP to make S-adenosylmethionine [SAMe], and that that compound then transferred the methyl group. "He worked it out beautifully and completely and unequivocably and it's a classic bit of work in biochemistry", Sokoloff said.