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The Gene in the Twenty-First Century

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The Gene in the Twenty-First Century CGA_C01.qxd 4/24/07 10:16 Page 1 1 CHAPTER 1 The gene in the twenty-first century Choong-Chin Liew, PhD, & Victor J. Dzau, MD Vries named the transmitted substances “pangens”; Introduction he later coined the term “mutation” to signify the When the word was first used in 1909, “gene” was a appearance of a new pangen [5]. hypothesis necessary to explain puzzling observa- Cambridge evolutionist William Bateson (1861– tions about heredity. As the century progressed, the 1926) translated Mendel into English and worked hypothesis began to acquire reality as the structure vigourously to promote Mendel’s ideas in the and functions of the gene were gradually elucidated. English-speaking scientific world. Bateson himself Earlier and simpler concepts became superseded as coined the term “genetics” in 1906 [6]. The word evidence led to better understanding of the gene. “gene” was not introduced until 1909, when Wilhelm Today the gene is recognized to be a highly complex Johannsen (1857–1927), a Danish botanist, offered entity. The genomics revolution is well underway this term in preference to earlier terms [7]. but there is much that remains for twenty-first cen- A next major step towards an elucidation of tury science to learn before the potential of molec- the gene came with the discovery that genes have ular biology and technology can be fully realized. physical locations on chromosomes in studies on Drosophila carried out by Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945) and his colleagues at the zoology de- The search for the gene partment of Columbia University [8,9]. Morgan’s Much of the science that laid the foundation for the student, Alfred Sturtevant (1891–1970) was able to genetics and genomics revolution took place in the show that the gene for a trait was localized in a fixed very near past; 1900 is the date often considered to location or locus arranged “like beads on a string” be the beginning of modern genetics. In that year, in his often quoted metaphor [10]. Later, Calvin three botanists working on plant hybridization, Bridges was able to visualize this arrangement independently, in three different countries, pub- using light microscopy to show in detail the parallel lished their rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s (1822– bands on the chromosomes of the salivary gland 1884) rules of inheritance, first presented in 1865 cells of larval fruit flies [11]. and then largely forgotten [1]. Carl Correns (1864– In 1927, another of Morgan’s students, Herman 1933) in Germany, Hugo de Vries (1848–1935) in J. Muller (1890–1967) proved in studies at the the Netherlands and Erich von Tschermak (1871– University of Texas, Austin, that ionizing radiation 1962) in Austria each published their findings in from X-rays and other mutagens could be used to the Berichte der Deutsche Botanischen Gesellschaft create genetic mutations in fruit flies, and that (Proceedings of the German Botanical Society) some of these mutations were able to pass to off- [2–4]. The botanists recognized that Mendel’s con- spring [12]. cept of dominant and recessive traits could be used Muller believed as early as the 1920s that genes to explain how traits can skip generations, appear- were “the basis of life” [13]. However, it was not ing and disappearing through the years. Hugo de until the 1940s that researchers began to work out 1 CGA_C01.qxd 4/24/07 10:16 Page 2 2 CHAPTER 1 The gene in the twenty-first century the physical and material properties of genes. In Mendelian genetics and conjectured that it is an 1944, Rockefeller University researchers, Oswald absence of the enzyme involved that leads to alkap- Avery (1877–1955), Colin MacLeod (1909–1972) tonuria and other “inborn errors of metabolism” and Maclyn McCarty (1911–2005) demonstrated [19]. that it was DNA that was the carrier of genetic Garrod’s hypothesis was given experimental information [14]. In 1952, Alfred Hershey (1908– support in an important series of studies on Neuro- 1997) and his laboratory assistant Martha Chase spora crassa carried out at Stanford University by (1928–2003) confirmed Avery’s findings [15]. George Beadle (1903–1989) and Edward Tatum Against this background can be understood the (1909–1975) between 1937 and 1941 [20]. Because importance mid-century of James Watson (b. 1928) biochemical processes are catalyzed by enzymes and and Francis Crick’s (1916–2004) double helix. In because mutations affect genes, reasoned Beadle their landmark paper, published in Nature in 1953, and Tatum, then genes must make enzymes: the Watson and Crick presented for the first time a “one-gene-one-enzyme” hypothesis, later made comprehensible model of a unit of heredity [16]. famous by Beadle. Briefly, their double helix is composed of two long The hypothesis was further developed in studies polymers of alternating sugar-phosphate deoxyri- on sickle cell anemia. In 1949, the hereditary basis bose molecules, like the sides of a twisted spiral lad- of the disorder was shown by James Neel (1915– der. To these molecules Watson and Crick attached 2000) [21]. Also in 1949, Linus Pauling (1901–1994) the ladder’s rungs, four nucleotide bases: adenine and Harvey Itano showed that the disease was linked and guanine (A and G) and cytosine and thymine to a modification in hemoglobin, such that the hemo- (C and T). The property of each base is such that globin in sickled cells carries a charge different to it attracts and bonds to its complementary base the charge of the molecule in normal cells [22]. forming arrangements known as base pairs: “A” can Eight years later, Vernon Ingram (1924–2006) only pair with “T” and “C” can only pair with “G.” and Francis Crick demonstrated that this difference The DNA bases are loosely attached to each other was caused by the replacement of a single amino by weak bonds; they are released from each other acid, glutamic acid, by another, valine, at a speci- by disrupting the bonds. Thus, every time a cell fic position in the long hemoglobin protein [23]. divides it copies its DNA program, in the human Sickle cell anemia was the first disease explicitly cell, it copies its entire three billion base pair identified as a disorder flowing from a derange- human genome. ment at the molecular level, or as Pauling himself Once the structure of the gene was described the put it, “a molecular disease” [22]. molecule could take its place in the scientific onto- Understanding of gene function sped up once logy of the twentieth century. With the double Watson and Crick had elucidated the structure of helix, classic genetics began to shift to molecular the double helix. As summarized in Crick’s famous genetics [8]. central dogma of 1958, information flows from DNA to RNA to protein [24]. The central dogma captured the imagination of biologists, the pub- Gene function lic and the media in the 1960s and 1970s [25]. Studies of gene function proceeded largely inde- “Stunning in its simplicity,” Evelyn Fox Keller pendently of investigations into gene structure. The writes, the central dogma allows us to think of the first clue to the biologic behaviour of the gene in the cell’s DNA as “the genetic program, the lingua organism came in 1902, with the work of London prima, or perhaps, best of all, the book of life” [25]. physician Archibald Garrod (1857–1936) [17]. In his famous paper published in the Lancet in 1902, The gene since 1960 Garrod hypothesized that alkaptonuria was a con- sequence of some flaw in body chemistry that dis- By 1960, the definition of a gene was that implied rupts one of the chemical steps in the metabolism by the central dogma: a gene is a segment of DNA of tyrosine [18]. He explained alkaptonuria as a that codes for a protein [26]. The first significant recessive disorder, using the terms of the new challenge to that definition arose with the work of CGA_C01.qxd 4/24/07 10:16 Page 3 CHAPTER 1 The gene in the twenty-first century 3 microbiologists Francois Jacob (b. 1920) and by stretches of non-coding DNA [34,35]. Walter Jacques Monod (1910–1976) of the Institut Pasteur Gilbert (b. 1932) of Harvard University later coined in Paris [27]. the terms “exon” and “intron” to describe these Monod and Jacob’s operon model explained regions [36]. gene function in terms of gene cluster. However, Split genes can be spliced, or alternatively such a model adds levels of complexity to the gene spliced, in different ways: exons can be excised out, and makes it more difficult to determine precisely some introns can be left in, or the primary tran- what is a gene. What should be included in one script can be otherwise recombined (for review see gene? Its regulatory elements? Its coding elements? [37]). The proteins thereby produced are similar What are the boundaries of the gene? [25]. Further- although slightly different isoforms. Split genes more, the Monod/Jacob gene loses some of its play havoc with the straightforward one-gene-one- capacity for self-regulation: on the operon model enzyme hypothesis. As Keller has pointed out “one the gene acts, not autonomously, but in response to gene – many proteins” is an expression common in proteins within the cell and between the cell and its the literature of molecular biology today [25]. environment [28]. Other nontraditional genes discovered (or be- Although Monod famously asserted that what come accepted by the research community) since was true for Escherichia coli would be true for the the 1960s include transposons, moveable genes that elephant, in fact the operon model of gene regula- travel from place to place in the genome of a cell tion characterizes prokaryotes (simple unicellular where they affect the expression of other genes dis- organisms without nuclei).
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