Robert merrifield developed the first synthetic approach for making what essential cell substances in the lab?
lipids
cells
acids
proteins
Cells in our bodies have an intricate mechanism for the manufacture of proteins. Humans have to use other techniques in order to synthesize the same proteins in a lab. The chemistry of peptide synthesis is complicated. Both active groups on an amino acid can react and the amino acid sequence must be a specific one in order for the protein to function. Robert Merrifield developed the first synthetic approach for making proteins in the lab, a manual approach which was lengthy and tedious (and, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for his work). Today however, automated systems can crank out a peptide in a very short period of time.