Aziz Sancar
Turkish-American Nobel laureate in DNA repair.
Aziz Sancar is a Turkish-American molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and the circadian clock. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Tomas Lindahl and Paul L. Modrich for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair. Sancar is currently the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also the co-founder of the Aziz & Gwen Sancar Foundation, a non-profit promoting Turkish culture and supporting Turkish students in the United States.
- born
- 8 September 1946
- field
- Molecular biology
- nationality
- Turkish-American
- known_for
- Mechanistic studies of DNA repair, photolyase, nucleotide excision repair, circa
Verified Timeline
Lore & Background
Aziz Sancar was born on 8 September 1946 to a lower-middle-class family in the Kurdish-dominated Savur district of Mardin Province, southeastern Turkey. He is the seventh of eight children. His parents were uneducated but put great emphasis on his education. He studied medicine at Istanbul University, graduating as the top student in 1969. He completed his PhD on the photoreactivating enzyme of E. coli in 1977 at the University of Texas at Dallas in the laboratory of Claud Stan Rupert. According to his own account, Sancar spoke Arabic with his parents and Turkish with his siblings. When asked about his ethnic background by the BBC, he responded: 'I told them that I neither speak Arabic nor Kurdish and that I was a Turk. I'm a Turk, that's it.' During his years at Istanbul University, he was involved with the far-right Turkish ultranationalist organization Grey Wolves.
Reader's Guide
Aziz Sancar's significance lies in his contributions to photolyase and nucleotide excision repair in bacteria, which changed his field. After completing his PhD, he had three rejected postdoctoral applications and then worked at Yale University as a laboratory technician for five years. There, in the laboratory of Dean Rupp, he elucidated the molecular details of nucleotide excision repair, identifying UvrABC endonuclease and discovering that these enzymes cut twice on the damaged strand of DNA, removing 12–13 nucleotides. He was accepted as a lecturer at the University of North Carolina, the only positive response from 50 applications. His longest-running study has involved photolyase and photo-reactivation; in his inaugural PNAS article, he captured photolyase radicals he had chased for nearly 20 years. Sancar was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 as the first Turkish member. He donated his original Nobel Prize golden medal and certificate to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on 19 May 2016.
Did You Know?
- Sancar is the second Turkish Nobel laureate after Orhan Pamuk, who is also an alumnus of Istanbul University.
- He donated his original Nobel Prize golden medal and certificate to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on 19 May 2016, the 97th anniversary of the start of the Turkish War of Independence.
- Sancar's research team discovered that the Period and Cryptochrome genes keep the circadian clocks of all human cells in proper rhythm, syncing them to 24 hours and seasons.
- He was granted naturalised citizenship of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on 31 July 2025.
- Sancar is a practicing Muslim and stated in an interview: 'I am proud to be Muslim, but I can not state this fact in many regions of the United States due to ongoing issues.'
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Aziz Sancar?
Aziz Sancar is a Turkish-American molecular biologist, born in 1946, who became world-renowned for decoding how living cells mend damaged DNA. He shares the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Tomas Lindahl and Paul L. Modrich for that body of work.
What exactly did Aziz Sancar win the Nobel Prize for?
The 2015 Chemistry Nobel recognized his mechanistic mapping of DNA repair pathways, particularly the role of photolyase and the nucleotide excision repair system in correcting mutations caused by UV light and other insults.
Where does Aziz Sancar work now?
He holds the Sarah Graham Kenan Professorship in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and is a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
What specific DNA repair mechanisms did Aziz Sancar uncover?
His laboratory detailed how photolyase uses light energy to reverse pyrimidine-dimer lesions and how the nucleotide excision repair cascade excises bulky adducts and fills the resulting gap, revealing the step-by-step enzymatic choreography of each pathway.
Why does Aziz Sancar matter to fans of chemistry and biology?
His work turned the abstract idea of 'DNA repair' into a concrete, mechanistic picture of which enzymes act in what order, giving researchers a blueprint for understanding how mutations accumulate in cancer and where therapeutic intervention might intercept the damage.
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