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Martynas Ycas:ˇ The “Archivist” of the RNA Tie Club

Bernard S. Strauss1 Department of and Cell , The University of Chicago, Illinois 60637 ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7548-6461 (B.S.S.)

ABSTRACT Between about 1951 and the early 1960s, the basic structure of molecular biology was revealed. Central to our understanding was the unraveling of the various roles of RNA, culminating in the identification of messenger RNA (mRNA) and the deciphering of the . We know a great deal about the role of Brenner, Crick, Jacob, and Nirenberg in these discoveries, but many others played important supporting parts. One of these is a little-known scientist, Martynas Ycas,ˇ who appears in histories, generally without explanation, as the “archivist of the RNA Tie Club.” Ycasˇ was born in Lithuania. His father helped write the Lithuanian Constitution in 1919. He studied Roman Law and served in the Lithuanian army before escaping from the Russians in 1940. The records of correspondence of Ycasˇ with the and with throw some light on the genesis of our understanding of the role of mRNA. The story of the “RNA Tie Club” illustrates the difficulty in assigning credit for important discoveries and underscores the importance of a free exchange of information, even (or especially) among competitors.

istory may be written by the winners, and it certainly connected in some way.The experiments of Beadle and Tatum Hemphasizes their role. Still, in 1676, or maybe 1675 de- and their followers had provided reasons for believing that a pending on whether one uses the Julian or Gregorian calendar, single gene determined, or controlled, a single enzyme (Beadle wrote to Robert Hooke “If I have seen further it 1950). But just what that meant in biochemical, or even ge- is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.” Scientific discovery is netic, terms was not clear. The evidence pointed more and not so different 400 years later. My story has as its background more to DNA as the genetic material, but how a substance with the elucidation of the genetic code and the understanding of (apparently) so dull a structure could manage this “control” the roles of the different RNA molecules, particularly mRNA. was unknown. Blackboards were full of balloons labeled There is no dearth of rightful claimants to the discoveries: “gene” with arrows leading to rectangles labeled “protein” Francis Crick, , , François Jacob, but what any of that meant in molecular terms was mysterious. Jacques Monod, and Matt Meselson come to mind. This nar- Not only was the structure of DNA an unknown, the structure rative is an attempt to explain the contribution of two largely of proteins was not clear. It was not even certain that proteins overlooked scientists: George Gamow, a well-known astro- were specific molecules with a definite structure. It was not physicist and, particularly, Martynas Yˇcas, a little known bi- until 1952 that Sanger and Tuppy (Sanger 1952; Stretton ologist. There are others who contributed importantly, but, in 2002) showed that insulin was a protein of specific amino acid my mind, these two are special in representing one of the rare sequence, thereby defining primary structure. The major fea- benefits that accrued to the United States from the tragedy of ture of the secondary structure of proteins—the coplanar ar- the second World War: the migration of foreign scientists, in rangement of the atoms in the peptide bond—had been this case scientists from Russia and the Baltic countries. discovered by Pauling, Corey, and Branson in 1951 (Pauling A graduate student in genetics or in biochemistry in and Corey 1951; Pauling et al. 1951; Eisenberg 2003). 1950 might be expected to know that genes and enzymes were Consider the situation in 1963, just 12 years later. The structure of molecular biology more or less the way we know it today had been ascertained. The of protein struc- Copyright © 2019 by the Genetics Society of America doi: https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.118.301754 tures, whether primary, secondary, and tertiary, were no Manuscript received October 31, 2018; accepted for publication December 26, 2018; longer absolute mysteries. The role of genes in determin- published Early Online December 31, 2018. fi 1Address for correspondence: 5550 S.Shore Dr. #509, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail: ing the speci city of proteins by serving as the source of in- [email protected] formation for amino acid sequence was understood. The

Genetics, Vol. 211, 789–795 March 2019 789 biochemistry of protein synthesis was understood in essence, both of whom, I contend, were serious participants in the if not in detail, and, by 1963, there was real evidence for the effort to understand the genetic code and the mechanism way all this was regulated (Jacob and Monod 1961). Al- by which information traveled from the gene to the pro- though there have been major advances since, the first edi- tein-synthesizing machinery. Others made the final steps tion of Watson’s Molecular Biology of the Gene written in but Gamow and Yˇcas were important contributors to the en- 1965 still feels almost up-to-date as compared to any text vironment that made their discoveries possible. Gamow is written just a decade earlier. How did this spectacular leap perhaps best known for being the father (or at least one of in our knowledge happen in just one decade? the uncles) of the “” theory in (Segre’ In retrospect, a convincing case could be made that these 2011). Yˇcas is often mentioned in histories of this period developments were the result of careful biochemical work but mostly in passing without any identification (Cobb from a number of laboratories. However, that was not the way 2015). Crick (1988) mentions Yˇcas, but without any identi- it seemed to a group of what came to be called “molecular fication or elaboration as to his role. I knew him as a fellow biologists,” practicing, as Chargaff wrote, “biochemistry with- graduate student, and afterward when we were both on fac- out license” (Chargaff 1963). It was the physicist George ulties in Syracuse. His role is interesting since it illustrates Gamow who immediately saw that the Watson-Crick struc- how close some of the minor players may be to a major dis- ture implied a code, which he thought could be deciphered, covery. It also illustrates how a series of discoveries can be and who recruited a group of theoretically minded scientists suddenly put together to clarify a whole series of phenomena. to work out the details from published data. And it was a The background work is essential, but it is simpler to ascribe Lithuanian refugee from the Russian occupation, Martynas the final result to one, or a very few, individual(s). Yˇcas, who provided Gamow with biological background and then provided Brenner and Crick with confirmatory ev- Martynas Ycasˇ idence for their concept of an RNA messenger. This is an account of how Yˇcas came to the United States, how he came Martynas came from a well-educated, upper class, Lithuanian to be a member of Gamow’s informal group, and what he family. His father (Martynas Sr.) was a lawyer who had been accomplished. elected to the Russian Duma, even though committed to the cause of Lithuanian independence. His mother Hypatia was an American citizen from Scranton Pennsylvania whose father The Effects of World War II and its Antecedent Years had been an agitator for Lithuanian independence. Martynas Whatever the cause, the second World War saw the introduc- Sr. met her (according to one of the Yˇcas family) during a tion of transformative technologies into biology. Radioactive round-the world-tour. The result was that Martynas and three isotopes became readily available. Less impressive, but no less younger sisters grew up bilingual (Yˇcas 2005). Martynas’ important, technologies, such as column and paper chroma- father participated in the 1919 Peace Conference as a Lithua- tography, made it possible to achieve quantitative analyses of nian delegate and was Lithuanian Finance Minister during proteins, nucleic acids, and their components. More impor- the 1920s. This was clearly an upper-class family as indicated tantly, and for a variety of reasons, the war directed a new by the following personal experience. During the 1960s I sort of scientist to study biological problems. Some were had invited Martynas to give a seminar at The University of intrigued by Schrödinger’s arguments in his book What is Life Chicago. Mrs. Musteikas, one of our laboratory technicians of (Schrödinger 1946), and, at the same time, were looking for Lithuanian ancestry saw the seminar notice and asked to an intellectual challenging field that did not have military meet him. She curtsied on being introduced! Not a usual re- implications. But there were other sources of new talent. A sponse to visiting speakers! Yˇcas had studied law in Lithuania, major one was one of the greater pieces of social legislation but that was ended by the Russian occupation, and he had in the United States: the GI Bill of Rights. This law provided served as a cadet in the Lithuanian artillery. On confiscation a path to a college education for numerous individuals who of their family estate by the Russians in 1940, the whole family otherwise would not have thought such a pathway possible. managed to escape across the border, through East Prussia In addition, the influx of new students provided a financial to Berlin. They then traveled through Europe to Portugal, stimulus to Colleges and Universities just emerging from the managed to get to Rio de Janeiro and then, after a short stay, Depression years. during which Martynas senior died, to New York. That all this A second source of new talent was a group of young and happened during a period of war in Europe is certainly due not-so-young scientists who migrated to the United States to to some special circumstances. First, Hypatia Yˇcas was (or had escape the dictatorships of Europe. The migration from Nazi been) a US citizen. Second, her daughter, also Hypatia, was a Germany is well documented (Medawar and Pyke 2000). The friend of the von Richthofen family (Baron von Richthofen migration from revolutionary Russia not so much, perhaps was the Red Baron, the WWI flying “ace”) and Barbara von because it lasted longer; Boris Ephrussi, a pioneer in mam- Richthofen was able to provide both food in Berlin and finan- malian cell genetics, for example, left in 1920. My story cial help for their travels. includes two scientists, one relatively well known, George The ship from Rio to New York stopped in Trinidad (Yˇcas Gamow, and a second, Martynas Yˇcas, a displaced Lithuanian, 2005), which provides some support for a story Martynas

790 B. S. Strauss told. He had a puckish sense of humor and may have been absolute number of amino acids in proteins was still not cer- testing my reaction, but after reading Hypatia’s book the tain). He was able to construct a model in which specific story makes sense. She records a brief stop in Trinidad amino acids would fit into the “holes” in the DNA structure. (Yˇcas 2005) on their way to the United States. There is also Most importantly, he suggested a test of his hypothesis “there a vague remembrance by John Yˇcas of a story his father told must be a partial correlation between adjacent amino acids” about Intelligence officers. A British intelligence officer was (Gamow 1954). interviewing passengers (I deduce that it had to be at this Yˇcas himself tells the story of what happened next in his Trinidad stop) and asked for evidence of good character. introduction to the papers related to his work, deposited in Martynas, according to his story, produced a document from the Archives of the Library: the Gestapo testifying to the required good reputation. I’m I noted that in Gamow’s scheme his codons overlapped sure he did it with a flourish. This bravado was certainly in ’ which would produce constraints on which amino acids character, but I ll bet would never have worked with a US could neighbor each other and that it should be possible fi of cer. Martynas came to this country in 1941, and, in 1944, to decode the codon-amino acid relations by a simple cryp- enlisted in the US Army. Because of his Lithuanian training he tographic approach...I was able to show that Gamow’s co- was assigned to the Artillery. To quote from one of his sons: don amino acid relations were not compatible with known he was transferred to Army intelligence and when it was amino acid sequences ...I was at that time not personally discovered he was proficient in Latin; it was concluded that acquainted with George Gamow but I informed him of my he would therefore have no difficulty in learning Japanese! results. He was interested so we met at Woods Hole (ocean- Shortly before starting Japanese, he contracted either mumps ographic institute) in 1954 and continued a fruitful collab- or some other infection that incapacitated him long enough oration, including the publication of a book, virtually until ˇ to miss the start of the course. The next available course was the time he died (Ycas 2010). Russian, so the Army assigned him to the At this time Yˇcas was 4 years from his PhD and working at school at the University of Wisconsin. He met his wife Mary (a the US Army Quartermaster Corps Research & Development microbiologist) at a United Service Organization (USO) Laboratories. dance in Madison, and, after his discharge, earned a Bachelor ...After a while, Gamow formed a partly humorous “RNA of Science degree from Wisconsin and turned up at Caltech as Tie Club” to be confined to 20 members (representing the a graduate student. 20 kinds of amino acids found in proteins) who, he hoped George Gamow is the subject of a joint biography with Max would continue work on the coding problem. Most of the Delbrück (Segre’ 2011), which makes some sense since they few who did were . Biochemists, especially those were both acolytes of the physicist in . with Nobel prizes tried to be polite, but usually made it clear that they regarded “decoding” as a theoretical approach and By 1932, Gamow had become disillusioned with the Soviet thus not real science. I (Yˇcas) continued work on the prob- fi regime and, in 1933, escaped with his wife via a scienti c lem and was awarded the title of “archivist” of the club... conference in . According to Segre’, Madam Curie (Yˇcas 2010). was also part of this escape, but that story is found in Segre’s The “Officers” of the Club, according to the letterhead book. Gamow established himself in the United States, first at Gamow had printed included George Gamow, Synthesiser; George Washington University. He was known for the bril- Jim Watson, Optimist; Francis Crick, Pessimist; Martynas liance of his ideas, a small but very significant fraction of Yˇcas, Archivist; Alex Rich, Lord Privy Seal. which turned out to be correct, his hard drinking, and, most It was evident to the members of the club that the sequence importantly, the good humor with which he took being of in the DNA in some way determined the se- proved wrong. He also had a rather impish sense of humor: quence of the amino acids in protein. Their goal was twofold: he and a graduate student Ralph Alpher had an important to deduce the details of the “code” that related nucleotides idea about the origin of the elements in the . Gamow and amino acids, and to determine how the information was decided that a paper on this subject required a proper set of authors so, apparently without permission, he added Hans transported. A detailed description of the various attempts to Bethe to produce a paper authored by Alpher, Bethe and deduce the details of the code is found in Who Wrote the Book Gamow [the alpha, beta, gamma paper] (Alpher et al. 1948; of Life? (Kay 2000). Segre’ 2011). This rather light-hearted approach to science shows up in his invention of the “RNA Tie Club.” The Search for mRNA In 1953, Watson and Crick published their model of a DNA structure (Watson and Crick 1953a,b). By this time, the work There was a good deal of information available by the mid-to- of Beadle and others had made it clear that there was some late 1950s to indicate that (most) protein synthesis occurred direct relationship between genes, which were now known to in the cytoplasm, even though (almost) all of the DNA was in be made of DNA, and enzymes, which were proteins made of the nucleus. Much of this information had been obtained by amino acids. Gamow read this paper and recognized that biochemists, but there was also a fascinating series of exper- there had to be some relationship between the four nucleo- iments using a large green alga, Acetabularia, which demon- tide bases of DNA and the 20 amino acids in proteins (the strated clearly that there was a message produced in the

Perspectives 791 nucleus that gave instructions for development to the cyto- By this time, Martynas had moved from the Quartermaster plasm, that this message was “used up” in the course of Corps laboratories to the Department of Microbiology at development, and needed a nucleus for replenishment Syracuse University Medical School. I was on the faculty of (Hämmerling 1953). The experiments were well enough the Liberal Arts College at Syracuse, and our families renewed known that I could write: their acquaintance. Martynas would come over to my labo- ratory to tell me what he was doing, but I confess to either not The easiest interpretation of this type of experiment is that the nucleus produces some substance essential in differen- being too interested or to just not understanding. However, it tiation which is stored in the cytoplasm and which is used up was clear that he had thought of an ingenious biological way to during the differentiation-regeneration process. ...The nu- test the idea that ribosomes were specific for the synthesis of cleus does not have to divide to produce this material. The particular proteins. A silkworm found in Nigeria, Epanaphe experiments therefore indicate that the nucleus is continu- maloneyi, produces a silk fibroin of simple composition: ally active (Strauss 1960). mainly and . A second protein, sericin, of more The term “message” can be found in several publications of complex constitution is produced in an anatomically separate the period. The evidence was sufficient to permit Crick to portion of the gland. Yˇcas proposed collecting these insects at formulate a set of rules about the transfer of information, the time of maximum silk production and comparing the RNA the so-called “Central Dogma.” Although I know of no pub- composition of the fibroin producing cells with that of the lished comments, it has always seemed to me that Cricks sericin producers as well as with other portions of the insect. terminology is a practical joke that escaped and developed If the bulk RNA (that is mostly the ribosomes) determined a life of its own. “Dogma” is defined as “a principle or set of protein specificity there should be a difference in the overall principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true: RNA composition. He persuaded the Lalor Foundation to e.g. the rejection of political dogma, the Christian dogma of the award him a grant to collect the caterpillars, and, in 1957, Trinity.” That Crick, a confirmed and somewhat aggressive set off for Nigeria. atheist, should have accidentally picked on a term usually No differences between the RNA from the fibroin-producing employed to refer to religious doctrine is beyond belief. I sug- tissue and the bulk RNA of other tissues or from the sericin- gest he used it playfully and was then surprised at how it stuck. producing portions were detected (Yˇcas and Vincent 1960a). Crick’s insight was that information proceeded from DNA Although I had no idea what this might have meant, in retro- to RNA to protein but never in the reverse direction. The spect it was evidence (to Martynas at least) that the bulk question was just what was the nature of this message? Bio- RNA (i.e., ribosomes) did not determine protein specificity! chemical analysis had located the site of protein synthesis in It should not be thought that the collection was onerous. small particles called ribosomes and a reasonable hypothesis The caterpillars were collected on the grounds of University as to their function was analogous to the one gene one en- College, Ibadan, Nigeria. In a letter to Gamow on December 3, zyme hypothesis: “one ribosome one protein,” that is, each 1957, Yˇcas wrote: “Life of course was pretty rigorous being in ribosomal particle should be specific for one specific protein. a house with two servants and a gardener, air conditioning, This hypothesis permitted some specific predictions. Since Hi-Fi and a car... Being exhausted by the hardships of the proteins vary in amino acid composition and sequence, and African bush, I flew back via Casablanca where I got a car and amino acid composition and sequence was determined by the took off for a weeks’ vacation in Marakesh.” composition and sequence, ribosomes should also It was at this point that Martynas teamed up with an vary in nucleotide composition. Although it was not possible embryologist, Walt Vincent, who had the ability to sepa- to analyze the RNA composition of single ribosomes, their rate nucleotides. They then essentially repeated the Volkin- overall bulk RNA composition should reflect the overall Astrachan experiment, but this time with yeast, and, as DNA composition, assuming (as was then supposed) that opposed to the previous workers, with a real interest in the all the DNA was coding DNA. Surprisingly, this was not the relationship between RNA and protein. Their results with case; ribosomes in general seemed to have very similar base yeast indicated a fast turning over fraction of RNA with a compositions not at all related to the DNA composition. composition reminiscent of yeast DNA and differing from that There was also a known problem. Two investigators at the of the bulk RNA. They concluded: Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Elliot Volkin and Lazarus The function of such an RNA is not clear. In view of its Astrachan, had pointed out that, although mature bacterio- composition it might be a primary gene product acting as an phage contained no RNA, infected Escherichia coli incor- agent for transmission of genetic information from DNA to porated radioactive phosphorus into RNA nucleotides in protein. Alternatively it could be storing information for the proportions reminiscent of the composition of phage DNA. replication of DNA itself if such a process is, as has been suggested, of an indirect nature (Yˇcas and Vincent 1960b). Their results, published in 1956 (Volkin and Astrachan 1956), were [according to Brenner (2005)] widely known As a result of his association with Gamow, and the very in the molecular biology community but no one knew what informal “RNA Tie Club,” Martynas was in correspondence to make of them. As judged from his reminiscences (Volkin with Crick about these results, all of which came about at a 2001), Volkin’s interests did not extend to the coding prob- critical time for the understanding of mRNA. The events of lem or to the nature of information transfer. the period have been described elsewhere (Cobb 2015), but,

792 B. S. Strauss briefly, an experiment done at the Pasteur Institute (Pardee The actual isolation of mRNA followed, and much of the et al. 1959) had shown that, upon entry of a critical gene into excitement of the 1961 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was a E. coli, synthesis of the enzyme b-galactosidase started im- result of the experiments from a number of laboratories pro- mediately at almost a maximum rate, and without the time viding real evidence for the concept. The idea of instability of lag that would have been expected were massive ribosomal the message seems to have taken on an almost mystical RNA synthesis required. In his memoir (Crick 1988), Francis importance. At the presentation at the Cold Spring Harbor Crick recalls a meeting discussing this experiment with Fran- Symposium in 1961, I commented in the question period that çois Jacob in on Good Friday, 1960 which hap- mRNA could not always be unstable because non-nucleated pens to have been April 15. “Exactly what happened then is mammalian reticulocytes continued to synthesize hemoglo- obscure...At this point Sidney Brenner let out a loud yelp—he bin. Those were the days when questions were published. had seen the answer....” This was mRNA—the rapidly turn- Toward the end ofthe Symposium Iwas approached, I think by ing over fraction reported by Volkin and Astrachan. some post-doc from one of the presenting laboratories, who On that same day,April 15, 1960, Martynas wrote a letter to asked whether I really didn’t want to withdraw the question Crick: “Thank you very much for the note you and Brenner to avoid appearing too silly in print. sent me. It was interesting to read your speculations as to the At almost the same time, and from a completely different DNA like structure of S_rna. It makes me feel rather bad that source, was the completely unexpected and electrifying dis- I have omitted to send you the information we have on the covery by Nirenberg and Matthei that a synthetic polymer of subject. Unfortunately, I am short of copies of the manuscript polyuridine could direct the incorporation of and this paper is in press in the Proceedings of the National into protein (Nirenberg and Matthaei 1961). Their discovery Academy. However, I feel you should have some advance no- suggested a direct biochemical approach to the nature of the tice on the subject. The gist of the matter is that after brief code, and, after a period of intense competition, the complete exposure to 32P extracted yeast RNA has total counts in the code was known by about 1966. The intensity of the compe- 39nucleotides which indicate a composition very close to that tition among a few laboratories is illustrated by the following of yeast DNA...” anecdote. I was present at a Gordon Conference during this Martynas sent a preprint of his PNAS paper (Yˇcas and period and Joe Speyer from Severo Ochoa’s laboratory was Vincent 1960b) and Crick responded in a letter dated May giving a talk. When asked about some details of his experimen- 9, 1960. tal procedures he replied, to accompanying boos and catcalls, ’ It is really very kind of you to send a copy of your paper so that he couldn t say. In the days before cell phones, there was promptly...Sydney (Brenner) and I are now in two minds one pay phone available in the auditorium and, during inter- about writing a review, because our ideas, though some- mission, the hapless Speyer was seen in that booth. After in- what novel to us, are really not original. We derived them termission he announced that he could now give the details! a few days before your letter arrived, but in fact, with one Yˇcas interest in the theoretical aspects of the coding prob- reservation, they are just the same as one of the two you put forward. Moreover Belozersky also suggested something lem continued and he published a book on the subject in similar. As we may not write our review, I summarize our 1969 (Yˇcas 1969). The book includes a perfectly fair and hypothesis here. It has three features; orthodox discussion of the discovery of mRNA and there is Most of the RNA of ribosomes is not genetic RNA. Genetic no evidence either in the book, or in my recollections, of his RNA may be only, say, 10% of ribosomal RNA. feeling unfairly treated. Gamow had just died, and the book, “ Genetic RNA has the same base-ratios as the DNA. The Biological Code, is dedicated To the memory of George Gamow, who introduced biological coding to biologists.” Genetic RNA is (at least under some circumstances) unstable. Martynas had coauthored Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself with By genetic RNA we mean the hypothetical RNA which Gamow just 2 years earlier (Gamow and Yˇcas 1967). It is carries the sequence information from gene to ribosomes. clear that their relationship was central to Martynas’ work. You will see now how excited we were to receive your Nirenberg’s discovery only illustrated the central role of ... letter As you will see this hypothesis explains a lot of things wet-lab biochemistry in the development of molecular biol- (including your silk-gland result)...(Yˇcas and Vincent 1960a). ogy. My guess is that wasn’t Martynas’ strong point. The anal- It seems clear from this exchange that Crick, and, by yses of RNA were all done with Walt Vincent—a colleague at extension, Brenner, knew of and appreciated the importance Syracuse whose subsequent publication record indicates an of Yˇcas’ results, which added nicely to their own work, even interest in RNA/DNA relations in development. Martynas though there is no mention of the exchange in Crick’s memoir continued to publish theoretical papers on the evolution of nor was Yˇcas’ contribution cited in the papers on the isolation the genetic code at least until 1999 (Yˇcas 1999). However, his of mRNA. Who to cite is partly a matter of taste; I suspect it is attention had moved to the problem of consciousness, and, a rare investigator who has not at some point been surprised toward the end of his life, he resumed his correspondence to find his work missing from a list of citations. As well docu- with Crick. In April 1996, in answer to an offer to translate mented by Cobb (2015), one of the reasons no prize could be Crick’s book into Lithuanian, Crick wrote “I don’t think we awarded for the discovery of mRNA is that there were too shall fully understand consciousness by the end of this cen- many plausible candidates. tury, but it’s possible we can get a glimpse of the answer by

Perspectives 793 then. Whether it will all fall into place, as molecular biology Brenner, S., 2005 Society for Neuroscience Archival Interview did, without a vital force, or whether we need a radical for- June 25–26, 2005. Interview with Sydney Brenner, edited by mulation, only time will tell. Best wishes, Yours, Francis P.S. B. J. Meyer. YouTube, San Mateo, CA. Available at: https:// ’ ” web.sfn.org/SfN/About/History-of-Neuroscience/Autobiographical- By the way, I ve not been knighted. Videos-of-Prominent-Neuroscientists/Sydney-Brenner I last saw Martynas in 2004 shortly after Crick’s death. He Chargaff, E., 1963 Essays on Nucleic Acids. Elsevier, New York. and Mary, his wife, were in retirement in Syracuse. At that https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.7312 time he was immersed in writing a biography of his father, Cobb, M., 2015 Who discovered messenger RNA? Curr. Biol. 25: – which I understand has been published (in Lithuanian). Yˇcas R526 R532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.032 Crick, F. H., 1988 What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific had continued his correspondence with Crick about the na- Discovery. Basic Books, Inc., New York. ture of consciousness. It seemed to me that he was somewhat Eisenberg, D., 2003 The discovery of the alpha-helix and beta-sheet, miffed that Crick had died before responding to his (Marty- the principal structural features of proteins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. nas’) latest insights. USA 100: 11207–11210. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2034522100 I’ve wanted to tell Martynas’ story ever since I read those Gamow, G., 1954 Possible relation between deoxyribonucleic “ ” acids and protein structures. Nature 173: 318. https://doi.org/ mysterious references to the Archivist of the RNA Tie Club. 10.1038/173318a0 He was not in any way ill-treated, and perhaps one of the Gamow, G., and M. Yˇcas, 1967 Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself. Ad- reasons he is not better known is found in a letter to Crick in ventures in the New Biology. The Viking Press, New York. which he states that he is “allergic to symposia and meetings” Hämmerling, J., 1953 Nucleo-cytoplasmic relationships in the de- – as an explanation for not attending a 1960 Gordon Confer- velopment of Acetabularia. Int. Rev. Cytol. 2: 475 498. https:// doi.org/10.1016/S0074-7696(08)61042-6 ence. He was not one of the attendees of the 1961 Cold Jacob, F., and J. Monod, 1961 Genetic regulatory mechanisms in Spring Harbor Symposium (of course neither was Marshall the synthesis of proteins. J. Mol. Biol. 3: 318–356. https://doi. Nirenberg). Two things about his career have always in- org/10.1016/S0022-2836(61)80072-7 trigued me. I feel almost embarrassed about the first because Kay, L. E., 2000 Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Ge- in our present environment it seems so idealistic. The way in netic Code. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Medawar, J., and D. Pyke, 2000 Hitler’s Gift: Scientists Who Fled which a newly minted PhD (in embryology!) with no creden- Nazi Germany. Richard Cohen, European Jewish Publication So- tials other than a keenly analytic intellect could form a col- ciety, London. laboration with a noted astrophysicist and enter into a Nirenberg, M. W., and J. H. Matthaei, 1961 The dependence of collaboration and competition with the group creating a cell-free protein synthesis in E. coli upon naturally occurring or new science has always seemed to me to be a model of how synthetic polyribonucleotides. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 47: 1588–1602. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.47.10.1588 science is supposed to be conducted. The second is personally Pardee, A. B., F. Jacob, and J. Monod, 1959 The genetic control even stranger. That a young man from the Bronx should be- and cytoplasmic expression of “inducibility” in the synthesis of come a personal friend of a Lithuanian aristocrat is just im- b-galactosidase by E. coli. J. Mol. Biol. 1: 165–178. https://doi. probable. It has been pointed out to me that once we were org/10.1016/S0022-2836(59)80045-0 both graduate students at Caltech this wasn’t at all improba- Pauling, L., and R. B. Corey, 1951 Atomic coordinates and struc- ture factors for two helical configurations of polypeptide chains. ble but consider the events that brought us to the same place. Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA37:235–240. https://doi.org/10.1073/ The same set of events brought Gamow and other scientists to pnas.37.5.235 this country, helping to invigorate American science. Pauling, L., R. B. Corey, and H. R. Branson, 1951 The structure of Martynas died in 2014 at the age of 96. A last anecdote: proteins; two hydrogen-bonded helical configurations of the – Martynas and I were gossiping about science one day in polypeptide chain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 37: 205 211. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.37.4.205 Syracuse during a family visit and our conversation turned Sanger, F., 1952 The arrangement of amino acids in proteins. to someone’s work. Martynas stopped. “One doesn’t judge Adv. Protein Chem. 7: 1–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065- one’s friends.” 3233(08)60017-0 Schrödinger, E., 1946 What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Liv- ing Cell. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Acknowledgments Segre’, G., 2011 Ordinary Geniuses. Max Delbrück, George Gamow and the Origins of Genomics and Big Bang Cosmology. Viking John and Joe Yˇcas, Martynas’ sons, provided useful family Penguin, New York. background. I thank the archivists at the University of Col- Strauss, B. S., 1960 An Outline of Chemical Genetics. W.B. Saun- orado library for sifting through the Gamow/Yˇcas papers for ders, Philadelphi. fi relevant documents. Stretton, A. O., 2002 The rst sequence. Fred Sanger and insulin. Genetics 162: 527–532. Volkin, E., 2001 The discovery of mRNA. Mutat. Res. 488: 87–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1383-5742(00)00061-2 Literature Cited Volkin, E., and L. Astrachan, 1956 Phosphorus incorporation in Escherichia coli ribo-nucleic acid after infection with bacterio- Alpher, R. A., H. Bethe, and G. Gamow, 1948 The origin of chem- phage T2. Virology 2: 149–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/0042- ical elements. Phys. Rev. 73: 803–804. https://doi.org/10.1103/ 6822(56)90016-2 PhysRev.73.803 Watson, J. D., and F. H. Crick, 1953a Genetical implications of the Beadle, G. W., 1950 Biochemical aspects of genetics. Fed. Proc. 9: structure of deoxyribonucleic acid. Nature 171: 964–967. https:// 512–516. doi.org/10.1038/171964b0

794 B. S. Strauss Watson, J. D., and F. H. Crick, 1953b Molecular structure of nu- Archives and Preservation Department, University of Colorado cleic acids; a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 171: Boulder Libraries. 737–738. https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0 Yˇcas, M., and W. Vincent, 1960a The ribonucleic acid of Epana- Yˇcas, H., 2005 Springtime in Lithuania. Youthful Memories 1920– phe moloneyi Druce. Exp. Cell Res. 21: 513–522. https://doi. 1940. Adams Press, Chicago. org/10.1016/0014-4827(60)90284-6 Yˇcas, M., 1969 The Biological Code. North Holland Publishing Co., Yˇcas, M., and W. S. Vincent, 1960b A ribonucleic acid fraction Amsterdam. from yeast related in composition to desoxyribonucleic acid. Yˇcas, M., 1999 Codons and hypercycles. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 46: 804–811. https://doi.org/ 29: 95–108. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006549309688 10.1073/pnas.46.6.804 Yˇcas, M., 2010 [Collection (e.g.: Martynas Yˇcas Papers), [Box- Folder numbers (e.g.:1–4)], Boulder, CO: Special Collections, Communicating editor: A. S. Wilkins

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