Scientists Celebrate 50 Years Since Key RNA Discovery Rich Recalls Birth of a ‘Founding Technology’ for Biotech
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Volume 51 – Number 14 Wednesday – January 10, 2007 TechTalk S ERVING T HE M I T C OMMUNITY Scientists celebrate 50 years since key RNA discovery Rich recalls birth of a ‘founding technology’ for biotech Profound doubts were the frequent response when such a thing was possible and could work.” MIT biophysicist Alexander Rich announced that two sin- The seminal discovery of double-stranded RNA by Rich gle-strand ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules could spon- and Davies came only three years after James Watson and taneously align themselves to form a double helix, just Francis Crick stunned the scientific world by describing like those of their famous cousin, DNA. Many biologists DNA’s structure as a double helix. Watson and Crick not thought it impossible; the rest considered it unlikely. only described a structure but also suggested how inher- Today, 50 years later, it is abundantly clear that Rich— ited information—genetic information—is safely stored who made the discovery with David R. Davies while both and can be passed from one generation to the next. It was were working at the National Institute of Mental Health— a major milestone in the biosciences. was onto something big. In fact, it generated a paradigm In 1953, Rich—working with famed chemist Linus Paul- shift in the science of biology. The discovery changed how ing at Caltech—was using X-ray crystallography to try research is done at the molecular level and helped spawn to discover the structure of RNA, hoping to learn more what has become the global biotechnology revolution. about its role in life. One nagging question was whether To mark the anniversary, Rich was invited to write an RNA, like DNA, could exist in a double-stranded helical article about the work in the December issue of The Scien- molecule. tist. Likewise, Professor Alexander Varshavsky of Caltech The X-ray images weren’t helping much; they were wrote an article for Cell that appeared in the Dec. 29 issue. fuzzy, inconclusive shadows of the gooey, glassy fibers In 1956 Rich and Davies announced in the Journal of that were pulled from a glob of RNA. the American Chemical Society that single strands of RNA At Caltech, and later at the NIH, Rich and his col- can “hybridize,” joining together to form a double-strand- leagues “talked a lot about RNA,” he told a reporter ed molecule. As a result of the discovery and the work that from Chemical and Engineering News last month. “But followed, scientists now routinely identify, isolate, manipu- nobody—including myself—suggested, ‘Why don’t you late and replace the genes in living things. Such work led mix together Poly A and Poly U,’ the two differing stands to the Human Genome Project and is pushing science of RNA. It wasn’t at all obvious that could work,” he said, toward a fundamental understanding of how life works. in part because everyone felt an enzyme would be needed PHOTO / DONNA COVENEY “This was a founding technology of the biotechnology to stitch them together. “People had no idea that hybrid- business,” explained Rich, the William Sedgwick Thomp- Biophysicist Alexander Rich first mixed two differing strands son Professor of Biophysics. “The discovery was absolute- See RNA of RNA in 1956 to discover the RNA double helix. He holds ly remarkable because no one, myself included, thought Page 4 a model of tRNA (Transfer Ribonucleic acid). Berners-Lee receives Draper Prize MIT creates 3-D scaffold Stephanie Schorow the 3Com Founders Chair at MIT’s Com- News Office Correspondent puter Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Berners-Lee contin- for growing stem cells ues to guide the evolution of the web as The man credited with inventing the founder and director of the World Wide Stem cells grew, multiplied and differ- healthy colony of adult mouse stem cells World Wide Web, Timothy J. Berners- Web Consortium (W3C), an open, inter- entiated into brain cells on a new three- on the three-dimensional scaffold with- Lee, will receive the 2007 Charles Stark national forum that develops standards for dimensional scaffold of tiny protein frag- out the drawbacks of two-dimensional Draper Prize, the $500,000 annual award the Web. ments designed to be more like a living systems. and gold medal- “Berners-Lee demonstrated a high body than any other cell culture system. In addition to helping researchers get lion considered level of technical imagination in inventing An MIT engineer and Italian colleagues a more accurate picture of how cells grow “engineering’s this system to organize and display infor- reported the invention—which may one and behave in the body, the new synthetic Nobel Prize.” mation on the Internet,” according to a day replace structure can provide a more conducive The Draper NAE statement. His innovations include the ubiqui- microenvironment for tissue cell cultures prize will be the Uniform Resource Identifier (URL), tous petri dish and tissues used in regenerative medicine, presented Feb. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) for growing such as skin grafts or neurons to replace 20 in Washing- and HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). cells—in the brain cells lost to injury or disease. ton, D.C., to More remarkably, Berners-Lee chose Dec. 27 issue The scaffold itself can be transplanted Berners-Lee, to use scalable, public domain software in of the Public directly into the body with no ill effects. who “imagina- the web’s basic structure, which allows Library of Sci- “The time has come to move on from tively combined other to build inventions on its open archi- ence (PLoS) two-dimensional dishes to culture systems ideas to create tecture. “While others made millions off ONE. that better represent the natural context the World Wide his invention, the soft-spoken programmer Shuguang of cells in tissues and organs,” said Zhang, Tim Berners-Lee Web, an extraor- went on to found the World Wide Web Zhang, associ- whose coauthors on the paper, in addition dinary innova- Consortium,” Mark Frauenfelder wrote ate director of to Gelain, are from institutes and medical tion that is rapidly transforming the way in an October 2004 article for Technology MIT’s Center schools in Milan, Italy. people store, access, and share informa- Shuguang Zhang for Biomedical Review. Life in two dimensions tion around the globe,’’ according to the Berners-Lee, a native of England who Engineering, National Academy of Engineers (NAE), attended Oxford University, has received is a pioneer in coaxing tiny fragments of Biomedical researchers have become which established the Draper Prize in 1988 numerous honors, including Finland’s first amino acids called self-assembling pep- increasingly aware of the limitations of to honor engineers whose accomplish- Millennium Technology Prize in 2004. He tides to organize themselves into useful growing living cells in coated, two-dimen- ments have significantly benefited society. was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2004. structures. Working with visiting graduate sional petri dishes and glass slides. Berners-Lee proposed his concept The author of 1997’s “Weaving the student Fabrizio Gelain from Milan, Zhang In the body, cells are attached to and for the web in 1989 while at the Euro- Web” with Mark Fischetti, Berners-Lee created a designer scaffold from a network supported by the cells, other structures pean Organization for Nuclear Research continues to develop new web technolo- of protein nanofibers, each 5,000 times and proteins around them. A cell’s normal (CERN). He launched it on the Internet gies and recently helped found the Web thinner than a human hair and containing environment is a complex network of tiny pores up to 20,000 times smaller than the in 1991 and continued to refine its design See STEM CELLS through 1993. See BERNERS-LEE eye of a needle. Now a senior researcher and holder of Page 6 The researchers were able to grow a Page 6 NEWS RESEARCH IAP GRAD DEAN RETIREMENT IN YOUR EAR WINKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! Isaac Colbert announces his decision. Podcasts enhance language studies. MIT’s Tiddlywinks Team plays on. Page 3 Page 4 Page 3 PICOWER PICKS HEAD TASTE OF PLACE SONIC SUDSING Mark Bear is the new director. Heather Paxson discusses cheesemaking. Media Lab musicians will ‘bathe’ the Music Library. Page 5 Page 7 Page 7 PAGE 2 January 10, 2007 NEWS MIT Tech Talk William Orme-Johnson, inorganic biochemistry expert, dies at 68 OBITUARIES Stephanie Schorow study metal-based radicals and organic al, independent society that works for a News Office Correspondent radical intermediates in many enzymatic positive relationship between science and reactions. His lab was the first to apply religion. ESEEM (electron spin echo envelope “Bill was an extraordinary scientist, Edward A. Perkins Jr. MIT Professor Emeritus of Chemistry modulation) spectroscopic methods to a wonderful friend and colleague and Edward A. Perkins Jr., 70, of Brookline, William H. Orme-Johnson, heralded for map out the active site of steroid cyto- a great housemaster to the students in formerly of Somerville, died Jan. 2 at St. his four decades of contributions in the chrome P450 systems using deuteriated Bexley Hall,’’ said John M. Essigmann, Joseph’s Hospital in Nashua, N.H. field of inorganic biochemistry, died Jan. steroid substrates,” Stubbe said. “He was MIT professor of toxicology and chem- For 33 years, Perkins worked as a heat 1 after a long illness. He was 68. one of the first to realize that complex istry. and ventilation mechanic at MIT, retiring “Bill (called O.J. by all) was a giant bioinorganic cofactors were assembled In 1992, Orme-Johnson taught an in 1995. in the field of bioinorganic chemistry,” by complex biosynthetic pathways.” MIT Independent Activities Period class, From 1958 to 1963 he served in the Air said JoAnne Stubbe, Novartis Professor In 2002, the Journal of Inorganic Bio- “Applied Chili Chemistry,” that was so Force.