Google honors scientist Har Gobind Khorana with new Doodle

Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating what would have been the 96th birthday of Nobel Prize winning biochemist Har Gobind Khorana with a new Doodle.

Google's homepage features an illustration of of Khorana working inside of a lab by Bangalore, India-based artist Rohan Dahotre.

An Indian-American who obtained his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1948, Khorana rose to fame after studying with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley at the University of Wisconsin.

"Together, they discovered that the order of nucleotides in our DNA determines which amino acids are built. These amino acids form proteins, which carry out essential cell functions," Google said of the trio's discovery which led to them receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968.

"Fewer than five years later, Dr. Khorana made a second scientific breakthrough when he constructed the first synthetic gene. He received a host of awards during his lifetime, including the National Medal of Science," Google continued.

Synthetic genes are widely used in biology labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and animals.