The Dynamic Genome: Barbara McClintock's Ideas in the Century of Genetics Edited by Nina Fedoroff, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and David I Botstein, Stanford University School of Medicine Barbara McClintock was born in 1902, within a few years of the rediscovery of Mendel's laws. Her life, discoveries, and insights span the history of genetics in this century. ! In the 1920s, she became a dominant figure in the group that flourished at Cornell University under R.A. Emerson and made remarkable technical and conceptual advances in maize cytogenetics. These studies continued at the California Institute of Technology, in Freiburg, Germany, and at the University of Missouri. In 1942, she joined the staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, where she remains a Distinguished Service Member. McClintock's unique ability to discern relationships between the behavior of chromosomes and the properties of the whole organism earned her early recognition. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1944 and to the presidency of the Genetics Society of America in 1945. Had she done no more, McClintock would have become a major figure in the history of genetics. But at Cold Spring Harbor, she began the studies of the consequence of dicentric chromosome formation and breakage that led her to the discovery of genetic elements capable of moving within the genome and controlling expression of other genes. Although McClintock was universally respected and admired, the first reaction to these findings was often uncomprehending or indiferent, even dismissive. In due course, however, the generality of mobile genetic elements and the concept of a dynamic genome were understood and widely accepted, culminating in the award to McClintock of an unshared Nobel Prize in 1983. As Barbara's 90th birthday approached, some of her many friends and colleagues were invited to write essays for the occasion. This book contains a kaleidoscope of contributions, many by those who discovered transposition in other organisms. Their essays give a remarkable account of the scientific legacy of one of the century's greatest geneticists. CONTENTS Introduction (N. Fedoroff, D. Botstein) Transposable Elements: Tire Collected Papers of Barbara McClintock. Cytogenetics Kernels and Colonies: The Challenge of Pattern (J.A. Shapiro); Phage Reprint of Creighton and McCiintock 1931. A Correlation of Mu: An Early Prokaryotic Controlling Element (M.M. Howe); Cytological attd Genetical Crossing-over in Zea mays. Recollections Discovery of the Bacterial Transposon TnlO (D. Botstein); McClintock of Barbara McClintock's Cornell Years (H.B. Creighton); Barbara (1933): Implications for Meiotic Chromosome Pairing (N. Kleckner); McClintock: Reminiscences (C. Burnham); Barbara McClintock: Twenty-five Years of Transposable Element Research in K61n (H Recollections of a Graduate Student (H.V. Crouse); Neurospora Saedler, P. Starlinger); Obsession with Sequences (N.D.F. Grindley); Chromosomes (D.D. Perkins); The Early Years of Maize Genetics The Revenge of the Mayans (G. Albrecht-Buehler); "Please Come to (M.M. Rhoades) My Laboratory for Better Coffee, Fresh Orange Juice . Transposition Conversation" (B.M. Alberts); Transposable Elements (Ty) in Yeast Reprint of McClintock 1952. Chromosome Organization and Genic (G.R. Fink); Controlling Elements, Mutable Alleles, and Mating-type Expression. Insertion by Phages and Transposons (A. Campbell); Cold Interconversion (I. Herskowitz); Thinking about Programmed Genome Spring Harbor 1944 1955: A Minimemoir (E.M. Witkin); Annals of Rearrangements in a Genome Static State of Mind (J.N. Strathern); Mobile DNA Elements in Drosophila: The Impact and Influence of The Role of McClintock's Controlling Element Concept in the Story of Barbara McCiintock (M. Green); The Mutable waxy and bronzel Yeast Mating-type Switching (A.J.S. Klar); From Bacterial Flagella to Alleles of Maize (O.E. Nelson); Remembrances of Barbara Homeodomains (M.I. Simon); Discovery of Tcl in the Nematode, McClintock (O.L. Miller, Jr.); The Nucleolar-organizing Element (J.G. Caenorhabditis elegans (P. Anderson et ai.); Reprint of McClintock Gall); Do Some "Parasitic" DNA Elements Earn an Honest Living? 1978. Mechanisms That Rapidly Reorganize the Genome (M.-L. Pardue); The Plural of Heterochromatin (C.D. Laird); A The Nobel Prize and a Molecular Retrospective Tapestry of Transposition (A.M. Skalka); Reprint of McCiintock 1956. Reprint of McClintock 1984. Nobel Prize Lecture: The Significance of hrtranuclear Systems Controlling Gene Action and Mutation Responses of the Genome to Challenge. Broken Chromosomes and Retirement Telomeres (E.H. Blackburn); Maize Transposable Elements: A Story Reprint of Introduction. The Discovety and Characterization of in Four Parts (N.V. Fedoroff) 1992, 422 pp., illus, indexes ISBN 0-87969-422-X Cloth $65 Reader Service No. 795 GENES DEVELOPMENT VOLUME 6 NUMBER 8 PAGES 1357-1588 AUGUST 1992 EDITORIAL BOARD J. Adams (Melbourne, Australia) P. Ingham (Oxford, UK) Editors M. Ashburner (Cambridge, UK) N. Jones (London, UK) T. Grodzicker (Cold Spring Harbor) J. Beckwith (Boston, USA} R. Losick (Cambridge, USA) N. Hastie (Edinburgh) T. Cech (Boulder, USA) J. Manley (New York, USA) P. Chambon (Strasbourg, France) D. McClay (Durham, USA) Managing Editor N.-H. Chua (New York, USA) W. McGinnis (New Haven, USA) J. Cuddihy (Cold Spring Harbor) E. Coen (Norwich, UK) S. McKnight (Baltimore, USA) J. Coffin (Boston, USA) A. McMahon (Nutley, USA) S. Courtneidge (Heidelberg, FRG) P. Nurse (Oxford, UK) E. De Robertis (Los Angeles, USA) C. 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Send to: Dr. Copyright © 1992 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press GENES & DEVELOPMENT August 1992 Contents Research papers A tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase binds specifically to the group I intron