Delbruck: Conscience, Goad, and Sage Nobel Prizes
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Phage Integration and Chromosome Structure. a Personal History
ANRV329-GE41-01 ARI 2 November 2007 12:22 by Annual Reviews on 12/13/07. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Genet. 2007.41:1-11. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org ANRV329-GE41-01 ARI 2 November 2007 12:22 Phage Integration and Chromosome Structure. A Personal History Allan Campbell Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5020; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Genet. 2007. 41:1–11 Key Words First published online as a Review in Advance on lysogeny, transduction, conditional lethals, deletion mapping April 27, 2007 Abstract by Annual Reviews on 12/13/07. For personal use only. The Annual Review of Genetics is online at http://genet.annualreviews.org In 1962, I proposed a model for integration of λ prophage into the This article’s doi: bacterial chromosome. The model postulated two steps (i ) circular- 10.1146/annurev.genet.41.110306.130240 ization of the linear DNA molecule that had been injected into the Annu. Rev. Genet. 2007.41:1-11. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org Copyright c 2007 by Annual Reviews. cell from the phage particle; (ii ) reciprocal recombination between All rights reserved phage and bacterial DNA at specific sites on both partners. This 0066-4197/07/1201-0001$20.00 resulted in a cyclic permutation of gene order going from phage to prophage. This contrasted with integration models current at the time, which postulated that the prophage was not inserted into the continuity of the chromosome but rather laterally attached or synapsed with it. This chapter summarizes some of the steps leading up to the model including especially the genetic characterization of specialized transducing phages (λgal ) by recombinational rescue of conditionally lethal mutations. -
Jewels in the Crown
Jewels in the crown CSHL’s 8 Nobel laureates Eight scientists who have worked at Cold Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria Spring Harbor Laboratory over its first 125 years have earned the ultimate Beginning in 1941, two scientists, both refugees of European honor, the Nobel Prize for Physiology fascism, began spending their summers doing research at Cold or Medicine. Some have been full- Spring Harbor. In this idyllic setting, the pair—who had full-time time faculty members; others came appointments elsewhere—explored the deep mystery of genetics to the Lab to do summer research by exploiting the simplicity of tiny viruses called bacteriophages, or a postdoctoral fellowship. Two, or phages, which infect bacteria. Max Delbrück and Salvador who performed experiments at Luria, original protagonists in what came to be called the Phage the Lab as part of the historic Group, were at the center of a movement whose members made Phage Group, later served as seminal discoveries that launched the revolutionary field of mo- Directors. lecular genetics. Their distinctive math- and physics-oriented ap- Peter Tarr proach to biology, partly a reflection of Delbrück’s physics train- ing, was propagated far and wide via the famous Phage Course that Delbrück first taught in 1945. The famous Luria-Delbrück experiment of 1943 showed that genetic mutations occur ran- domly in bacteria, not necessarily in response to selection. The pair also showed that resistance was a heritable trait in the tiny organisms. Delbrück and Luria, along with Alfred Hershey, were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1969 “for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses.” Barbara McClintock Alfred Hershey Today we know that “jumping genes”—transposable elements (TEs)—are littered everywhere, like so much Alfred Hershey first came to Cold Spring Harbor to participate in Phage Group wreckage, in the chromosomes of every organism. -
Max Ludwig Henning Delbruck (1906–1981) [1]
Published on The Embryo Project Encyclopedia (https://embryo.asu.edu) Max Ludwig Henning Delbruck (1906–1981) [1] By: Hernandez, Victoria Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück applied his knowledge of theoretical physics to biological systems such as bacterial viruses called bacteriophages, or phages, and gene replication during the twentieth century in Germany and the US. Delbrück demonstrated that bacteria undergo random genetic mutations to resist phage infections. Those findings linked bacterial genetics to the genetics of higher organisms. In the mid-twentieth century, Delbrück helped start the Phage Group and Phage Course in the US, which further organized phage research. Delbrück also contributed to the DNA replication debate that culminated in the 1958 Meselson-Stahl experiment, which demonstrated how organisms replicate their genetic information. For his work with phages, Delbrück earned part of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Delbrück's work helped shape and establish new fields in molecular biology and genetics to investigate the laws of inheritance and development. Delbrück was born on 4 September 1906, as the last of seven children of Lina and Hans Delbrück, in Berlin, Germany. Delbrück grew up in Grunewald, a suburb of Berlin. In 1914, World War I [2] began. During the war, Delbrück's family struggled with food shortages and in 1917 Delbrück's oldest brother died in combat. After the war ended in 1918, Delbrück began to study astronomy. Some nights, Delbrück woke up in the middle of the night to observe the stars with his telescope. He also read about the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler, who studied planetary motion in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Germany. -
Martha Chase Dies
PublisherInfo PublisherName : BioMed Central PublisherLocation : London PublisherImprintName : BioMed Central Martha Chase dies ArticleInfo ArticleID : 4830 ArticleDOI : 10.1186/gb-spotlight-20030820-01 ArticleCitationID : spotlight-20030820-01 ArticleSequenceNumber : 182 ArticleCategory : Research news ArticleFirstPage : 1 ArticleLastPage : 4 RegistrationDate : 2003–8–20 ArticleHistory : OnlineDate : 2003–8–20 ArticleCopyright : BioMed Central Ltd2003 ArticleGrants : ArticleContext : 130594411 Milly Dawson Email: [email protected] Martha Chase, renowned for her part in the pivotal "blender experiment," which firmly established DNA as the substance that transmits genetic information, died of pneumonia on August 8 in Lorain, Ohio. She was 75. In 1952, Chase participated in what came to be known as the Hershey-Chase experiment in her capacity as a laboratory assistant to Alfred D. Hershey. He won a Nobel Prize for his insights into the nature of viruses in 1969, along with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria. Peter Sherwood, a spokesman for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where the work took place, described the Hershey-Chase study as "one of the most simple and elegant experiments in the early days of the emerging field of molecular biology." "Her name would always be associated with that experiment, so she is some sort of monument," said her longtime friend Waclaw Szybalski, who met her when he joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1951 and who is now a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Szybalski attended the first staff presentation of the Hershey-Chase experiment and was so impressed that he invited Chase for dinner and dancing the same evening. "I had an impression that she did not realize what an important piece of work that she did, but I think that I convinced her that evening," he said. -
Grete Kellenberger-Gujer: Molecular Biology Research Pioneer
Bacteriophage ISSN: (Print) 2159-7081 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/kbac20 Grete Kellenberger-Gujer: Molecular biology research pioneer Sandra Citi & Douglas E. Berg To cite this article: Sandra Citi & Douglas E. Berg (2016) Grete Kellenberger-Gujer: Molecular biology research pioneer, Bacteriophage, 6:2, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/21597081.2016.1173168 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21597081.2016.1173168 © 2016 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC© Sandra Citi and Douglas E. Berg Accepted author version posted online: 05 Apr 2016. Published online: 05 Apr 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 322 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=kbac20 Download by: [Université de Genève] Date: 26 September 2016, At: 06:05 BACTERIOPHAGE 2016, VOL. 6, NO. 2, e1173168 (12 pages) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21597081.2016.1173168 LIFE IN SCIENCE Grete Kellenberger-Gujer: Molecular biology research pioneer Sandra Citia and Douglas E. Bergb aDepartment of Cell Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; bDepartment of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Grete Kellenberger-Gujer was a Swiss molecular biologist who pioneered fundamental studies of Received 17 February 2016 bacteriophage in the mid-20th century at the University of Geneva. -
Guest Commentary
JOURNAL OF BACTERIOLOGY, Feb. 2004, p. 595–600 Vol. 186, No. 3 0021-9193/04/$08.00ϩ0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.186.3.595–600.2004 Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved. GUEST COMMENTARY Lysogeny at Mid-Twentieth Century: P1, P2, and Other Experimental Systems Giuseppe Bertani* Biology Division, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125 Most of us doing research have a preferred material, a set of Latin countries of Europe, immunology being the star of the well-tried techniques, a standing list of unsolved problems, day in medical quarters. Also, the debate only rarely focused ways of looking at or of doing things, which we share to a large on one type of experiment with well-defined and generally extent with colleagues in the same laboratory and others in the available material. In the early thirties a definition of lysogeny same area of specialization, be they friends, former associates, was reached (26) that is still valid, obviously without modern or competitors. All this and more is encompassed by the con- molecular implications. Anlage, a German word used in em- cept of “experimental system” as introduced and used by Hans- bryology, was applied by Burnet and McKie (27) to what we Jo¨rg Rheinberger (76, 77), a historian of science. His concept, now call prophage. The concept of Anlage or prophage was rather flexible and rich in metaphors, may be easily adapted to based on the fact that no one had succeeded, using a variety of the present narrative, which proceeds from a personal view methods, in demonstrating the presence of infectious phage rather than from a critical historical examination. -
Alfred Day Hershey (1908–1997) [1]
Published on The Embryo Project Encyclopedia (https://embryo.asu.edu) Alfred Day Hershey (1908–1997) [1] By: Hernandez, Victoria Keywords: Hershey, Alfred Day [2] Lambda phage [3] Bacteriophage [4] Hershey-Chase experiments [5] During the twentieth century in the United States, Alfred Day Hershey studied phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, and experimentally verified that genes [6] were made of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Genes are molecular, heritable instructions for how an organism develops. When Hershey started to study phages, scientists did not know if phages contained genes [6], or whether genes [6] were made of DNA or protein. In 1952, Hershey and his research assistant, Martha Chase, conducted phage experiments that convinced scientists that genes [6] were made of DNA. For his work with phages, Hershey shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine [7] with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria. Hershey conducted experiments with results that connected DNA to the function of genes [6], thereby changing the way scientists studied molecular biology and the development of organisms. Hershey was born on 4 December 1908 to Alma Wilbur and Robert Hershey in Owosso, Michigan. He attended public schools in both Owosso and Lansing, Michigan, where his father worked as a stockkeeper at an automobile factory. For his higher education, Hershey attended Michigan State College, later called Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan. There, he received his Bachelor’s of Science in chemistry in 1930 and his PhD in bacteriology and chemistry in 1934. Hershey wrote his doctoral dissertation on the separation of chemical constituents, or components like sugars, fats, and proteins, from different strains of the Brucella [8] bacterial group. -
Genetics Society of America
Genetics Society of America 1991 Records, Proceedings and Reports Published as supplementary material in GENETICS, Volume 128 Prepared by The Secretary Thomas C. Kaufman Department of Biology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 s2 BOARDS, COMMITTEES AND REPRESENTATIVES FOR 1991 BOARDOF DIRECTORS Leland H. Hartwell, President Nina V. Fedoroff John C. Lucchesi, Vice-president Barry S. Ganetzky Thomas C. Kaufman, Secretary Christine Guthrie Carol S. Newlon, Treasurer H. Robert Horvitz Robert L. Metzenberg, Past President Martha M. Howe John W. Drake, Editor John R. Roth GENETICSEDITORIAL BOARD John W. Drake, Editor Roger E. Ganschow Sally Lyman Alien Maureen R. Hanson Karen Artzt Robert K. Herman Douglas E. Berg Richard R. Hudson David Botstein Nancy A. Jenkins John E. Boynton Elizabeth Jones Anthony H. D. Brown Cathy C. Laurie Benjamin Burr Wen-Hsiung Li Marian Carlson Trudy F. C. Mackay Deborah Charlesworth Patricia J. Pukkila Peter Cherbas G. Shirleen Roeder Arthur Chovnick Trudi Schupbach Andrew G. Clark William F. Sheridan Thomas W. Cline Michael J. Simmons Rowland H. Davis Gerald R. Smith Robin E. Denell Steven D. Tanksley Norman R. Drinkwater Elizabeth Thompson Victoria G. Finnerty Michael Turelli Margaret T. Fuller Bruce S. Weir ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE Gerry Gurvitch, Executive Director Sharon Adler,Accounting Assistant Judy Ashton, Receptionist/Oflce Assistant Gloria Garber, MembershiplMeetings Assistant Karen Gould, Comptroller Sequietta Johnson,Publications Assistant Candis Kershner, Bookkeeping Assistant Margot Kiley, Membership Manager Krista Koziol, Publications Manager Anne Marie Langevin, GSA Meetings Manager Damita McVeigh, Membership Assistant Marsha Ryan, ASHG Meetings Manager Jane Salomon, ASHG Special Projects Manager Elaine Strass, Deputy Director COMMITTEES Executive Christine Guthrie Leland H. -
When Physics Meets Biology: a Less Known Feynman
When physics meets biology: a less known Feynman Marco Di Mauro, Salvatore Esposito, and Adele Naddeo INFN Sezione di Napoli, Naples - 80126, Italy We discuss a less known aspect of Feynman’s multifaceted scientific work, centered about his interest in molecular biology, which came out around 1959 and lasted for several years. After a quick historical reconstruction about the birth of molecular biology, we focus on Feynman’s work on genetics with Robert S. Edgar in the laboratory of Max Delbruck, which was later quoted by Francis Crick and others in relevant papers, as well as in Feynman’s lectures given at the Hughes Aircraft Company on biology, organic chemistry and microbiology, whose notes taken by the attendee John Neer are available. An intriguing perspective comes out about one of the most interesting scientists of the XX century. 1. INTRODUCTION Richard P. Feynman has been – no doubt – one of the most intriguing characters of XX century physics (Mehra 1994). As well known to any interested people, this applies not only to his work as a theoretical physicist – ranging from the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics to quantum electrodynamics (granting him the Nobel prize in Physics in 1965), and from helium superfluidity to the parton model in particle physics –, but also to his own life, a number of anecdotes being present in the literature (Mehra 1994; Gleick 1992; Brown and Rigden 1993; Sykes 1994; Gribbin and Gribbin 1997; Leighton 2000; Mlodinov 2003; Feynman 2005; Henderson 2011; Krauss 2001), including his own popular -
Genetics and Development at the Threshold of Life—The Caltech
Genetics and Development at the Threshold of Life- By ROBERT S. EDGAR and WILLIAM B. WOOD Although bacteriophages-viruses which attack bacteria-have been known for over 60 years, the detailed study of their reproductive cycle began only in the early 1940's. At that time Max Delbriick, a former physicist and visiting research fellow at Caltech who had become interested in the mech- anism of heredity, recognized in the phage an ideal experimental material for exploring the nature of the gene. In the succeeding years, many of today's leading contributors to the field now known as mo- lecular biology passed through Dr. Delbriick's "Cal- tech Phage Group" as graduate students and post- doctoral fellows, and research with bacteriophages led directly or indirectly to much of the recent ex- plosive progress in this new science. Bacteriophages, as Delbrtick suspected, proved ideally suited to studies of the molecular basis of heredity. They represent the simplest genetic sys- tems we know-life trimmed to its barest essentials. The bacterial hosts on which they grow are them- selves simple (as cellular organisms go), generally harmless, and easy to culture and manipulate in the laboratory. Despite their extreme simplicity, how- ever, bacteriophages transmit and utilize their ge- netic information by the same basic mechanisms that are common throughout the biological world, with the consequence that phage research has been Heads, tails, and tail fibers of T4 bacteriophages can be of value in understanding not only the process of distinguished In this micrograph taken by Ronald virus multiplication but also problems of heredity Luftig. -
Chapter 22 Max at Vanderbilt David F
Chapter 22 Max at Vanderbilt David F. Salisbury Associate Director Science & Research Communications Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee Allison Price Editorial Assistant Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee Robert D. Collins Professor of Pathology Shapiro Chair in Pathology Vanderbilt University Medical Center Nashville, Tennessee John P. Wikswo Gordon A. Cain University Professor A.B. Learned Professor of Living State Physics Director, Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems 213 Research and Education Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, and Physics Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee [email protected] Th ere is a new bronze plaque dedicated to Nobel laureate Max Delbrück on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Th is plaque, on the third fl oor of Buttrick Hall, reads: Located here was the laboratory of Max Delbrück, a member of the physics department faculty from 1940 to 1947. It was then that he and his group conducted fundamental studies that provided the foundation for modern molecular biology. Th is work led to his receiving, along with Alfred Hershey and Salvador Luria, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969 for discoveries concerning “the replication mechanism and genetic structure of viruses.” Max Delbrück had the greatest infl uence of any physicist on biology in the 20th century, but the fundamental role that Vanderbilt played in his life and career has been largely overlooked by the scientifi c community. To help rectify this oversight, John Wikswo, the Gordon A. Cain University Professor at Vanderbilt, organized a centenary Delbrück symposium on September 14, 2006, and the university had the plaque created and installed. -
20.109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering
20.109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering Module 1 Nucleic Acids Class 1 Office Hours: by appointment Hun$ng virus (2005) The Microbial World Image from CDC Haeckel (1866), a Swiss naturalist, was the first to create a natural kingDom for the microbes, which had been DiscovereD nearly two centuries before by Antony van Leeuwenhoek Whitaker, 1967 Pace, Science 276 1997 ReviseD tree of life Pace Nature 2006 The Microbial World Image from CDC Viral discovery curve. Anthony S J et al. mBio 2013; doi:10.1128/mBio.00598-13 RoingearD P, BranD D. BuDDing of human immunoDeficiency virus [from a lymphocyte]. N Engl J MeD. 1998;339:32. Microbes in our World • Microbial communi$es (e.g. – human gut) • Fermentaon (e.g. – beer) • InDustrial proDucts (e.g. – meDicinals, cosme$cs, etc…) • Nitrogen fixaon, nutrient cycles in ecosystems. Influenza Disease Ecology (measure, model) Clin. Microbiol. Rev. January 2001 vol. 14 no. 1 129-149 The microbial environment Scientific American interactive microbiome ScitechDaily.com Discovering the microbial environment "Meet your microbes" PublisheD in: Chen Cao; Wenjun Jiang; Buying Wang; Jianhuo Fang; JiDong Lang; Geng Tian; Jingkun Jiang; Ting F. Zhu; Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 1499-1507. DOI: 10.1021/es4048472 Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society PublisheD in: Chen Cao; Wenjun Jiang; Buying Wang; Jianhuo Fang; JiDong Lang; Geng Tian; Jingkun Jiang; Ting F. Zhu; Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 1499-1507. DOI: 10.1021/es4048472 Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society History of Molecular