2016/01/11 by Sydney Brenner · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · #Historical Medical Research and Treatments #Philosophy and History of Science #Twentieth Century Scientific Developments
paper · pdf · doi:10.1261/rna.055590.115
openalex publication_date 2016/01/11 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.Fred had decided to start work on sequencing nucleic acids and Brownlee was asked to try to purify phenylalanine transfer RNA.The transfer RNAs were chosen because they were small molecules and could be purified from natural sources.Although he failed in this task, Brownlee continued working on sequencing methods using the 5S RNA of E. coli, which could be labeled with radioactive phosphate and the relatively small amounts easily purified.In his previous work, Fred had tried to develop radioactive methods for sequencing proteins because these methods reduced the amount of pure material required for the task.He knew that only a few proteins were available in the gram quantities required for the methods he developed with insulin.Furthermore, the protein could be labeled with radioactive tags, which allowed limited radioactive sequencing of peptides produced by enzymatic fragmentation.A good deal of this biography is based on almost verbatim interviews of Fred Sanger which George Brownlee made in 1992, about a decade after Fred had retired.The interviews cover his early life, his work on insulin in the Biochemistry Department for which he won his first Nobel Prize (1958, Chemistry, for his work on the structure of proteins, especially insulin), and his work in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology on sequencing RNA and DNA for which he was awarded his second Nobel Prize (1980, Chemistry, jointly with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert, for contributions to the determination of sequences in DNA).The book also has five commentaries by other scientists and an introduction by Ed Southern; all emphasize how Fred Sanger revolutionized the whole field of biological