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Kim Sung-Hou (; born 1937) is a Korean-born American structural biologist and biophysics. Kim reported the first 3D structure of tRNA with Alexander Rich in 1973. He also published many papers on the structures of protein molecules including human Ras subfamily, human cyclin dependent kinase 2 and small heat shock protein. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1994. He is currently a professor in the department of chemistry at the U.C. Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL).
From 1972 to 1978, he served as assistant and associate professor at the department of biochemistry, Duke University School of Medicine, and as professor at the department of chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, from 1978 to present.
At a symposium held in June 1974, both Rich and Robertus from Klug's group presented their results with little detail. Afterwards Klug's group argued and complained to Francis Crick that Rich's group published a paper in Science within a month of the symposium influenced by what they had heard which differed in some details from Rich's earlier 3 Å structure. Two weeks later a Nature paper by Klug's group presented their 3 Å structure. Crick wrote to Rich concerning Klug's accusation. Crick's first letter to A. Rich on the accusation, Jul 1974 However, Rich denied any scientific misconduct. Rich's reply to Crick's first letter, Aug 1974
The controversy arose from Klug's group not realizing that there were two tRNA models in the US: the MIT model (produced by Rich's team) and the Duke model (produced by Kim's team; Kim had moved to Duke University in 1972). There had been a breakdown of communication between the MIT and Duke groups in 1973-1974, during which period the models were developed independently. The Science paper in 1974 was based on the Duke model, which reconfirmed the correctness of the original backbone structure, and revealed an atomic structure that differed in a few details from the MIT model and, as it turned out, from the Cambridge model as well. The existence of the Duke model was later recognized and acknowledged by Crick. Crick's second letter to Rich, Sept 1974 The controversy would have been resolved at the outset if it had been informed to Klug's group that the Science paper in 1974 was based specifically on the tRNA structural model of Kim's laboratory at Duke University, not on the MIT model.
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