Operators and Promoters: The Story of Molecular Biology and Its Creators (review)

Harrison Echols, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, made the writing of this book his central task in the six years remaining to him after a diagnosis of cancer in 1986. When he saw his time running out he entrusted his wife, Carol Gross (also a molecular biologist), with the completion and editing of the nearly finished draft. Dr. Gross and other scientists wrote "several small sections" (p. xviii) that Echols had left unwritten.

According to its subtitle, the book is the story of "Molecular Biology and Its Creators" in the years 1955-90. The reader finds, however, that it is the title, "Operators and Promoters," that more accurately conveys its content. This is not a comprehensive history of molecular biology, even in these years. Nor is it "a personal account of the development of the biological paradigms that we now take for granted," as the preface states (p. xv). Rather, its focus is largely on gene regulation, the source of the terms "operators" and "promoters" that (acknowledging the title's double entendre) designate the major controlling elements in the regulation of genes. Not incidentally, this research field was the province of Echols's interest and contribution. He did a superb job of describing the science of this major area of molecular biology, enhanced by numerous diagrams and line drawings of the scientists. There is also a foreword by Arthur Kornberg (a colleague in nucleic acid research), a preface by Dr. Gross, an afterword by Thomas Cech (another expert in nucleic acids), a glossary, a time line, and subject and name indexes.

Operators and Promoters invites comparison with Michel Morange's History of Molecular Biology (1998). Although Morange's book covers a much longer period, its major chronological focus is similar. In addition, both authors are molecular biologists writing histories of their discipline for a wide audience, and both personalize their accounts with insider knowledge of colleagues and events. But Morange alone includes and references historical scholarship in molecular biology. This was not Echols's intent, nor is there evidence in his book that he was familiar with this body of literature. What Echols largely provided is an internalist account of episodes (or case studies, as Gross calls them) in gene-regulation research and related topics, with mention of the impact of new technologies. This episodic treatment makes it difficult to discern the relationship of discoveries to central and shifting questions in molecular biology.

Echols sought to enliven his technical story with anecdotes and observations about the personalities of some of the scientists mentioned. In addition to his own recollections, we are told that he conducted "extensive taped interviews with many of the major protagonists" (p. xvii). (Interviews were taped with forty-two individuals, according to a list on p. xx.) Since Echols stated his belief on p. 1 that "molecular biology has been developed by people and not by principles," one wonders why he did not fully utilize this presumably rich resource for direct quotations. The few quotes he used are unreferenced.

Although this admittedly personal account by a scientist-participant provides an idea of the intellectual milieu in which the recounted research occurred, the historian hungers to learn the larger context—institutional, social, and cultural—in which all this heady science was being conducted. One exception to this largely acontextual account appears in the chapter on genetic engineering. Here Echols referred to the recombinant DNA controversy of the 1970s in which certain scientists, government officials, and members of the public worried about possible biohazards arising from recombinant DNA research. Why did Echols in this instance choose to provide social context for his science story? Was it because, as he tells us (pp. 343-44), he...