In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Six RECOMBINANT DNA I wasn't surprised about much ifanything until 1966. But eifter that, well, the last ten years have surprised us enormously. We had no idea. No idea. FRANCIS CRICK 1983, quoted in Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague JANUARY 1971. THE MAIN building of the Stanford University School of Medicine was the ugliest building on campus. The beautiful central quad was a spacious collection of buildings laid out like a vast Spanish villa, all coordinated with terracotta roofs, fine murals, intricate stone carvings, and covered walkways around sun-drenched courtyards. But the medical school, on the western edge ofthe campus, consisted ofa hundred-yard-Iong, monolithic edifice apparently designed in a bizarre fit ofEgyptomania. Constructed ofhuge concrete tiles with a squared-spiral pattern on them, the outer walls looked more like freeway soundproofing than anything else. Cramped and oversized iron platter chandeliers hung theatrically along the outside perimeter from thirty-foot chains. Luckily, biologists aren't picky about architecture , and the members of the Stanford biochemistry department worked busily inside. Paul Berg was there, and he was planning an experiment that embodied the most revolutionary idea in experimental biology in twenty years. Berg was forty-five years old and full of vigor. He was a pleasant man with a fatherly manner and sun-worn skin. He still had his naval officer's haircut from World War II. By 1965, he had won the California Scientist of the Year Award, and he still managed to put enough time into his teaching to win Stanford's teaching award twice. Originally, after graduate school and his early successes in the lab ofArthur Kornberg (who won the 87 1959 Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of DNA polymerase and the in vitro synthesis of DNA in a test tube), Berg went on to develop in vitro systems for synthesizing RNA and proteins. In 1967, he decided that he wanted to study animal cell biology by means of tumor viruses, so he took a sabbatical and studied with Renato Dulbecco at the Salk, who was then specializing in tumor viruses. When Berg returned to Stanford, he began work on SV40, a DNA tumor virus. SV40 was originally isolated from monkeys (SV stands for simian virus), where it lived a peaceful existence; but it caused cancer in mice and in human cells grown in laboratory Basks.* It seemed to have no obvious effects on humans. Berg was initially concerned that if SV40 could cause cancer in laboratory cells, exposure to it would give him cancer; but researchers at the Salk calmed his fears, and Dulbecco swore that SV40 was so harmless he would drink it. Nevertheless, no one could be certain that SV40 would not cause cancer twenty years later. The dishwashers, technicians , and the members of neighboring laboratories at Stanford were all scared of SV40. Contagious cancer was a terrifying prospect, and no one wanted to be part of an inadvertent experiment with a lethal virus. Berg took everyone's fears in stride and built a high-security lab, separate from the main building, complete with sterile laminar-Bow hoods and a hightech air filtration system. The rooms were under negative pressure so that air always Bowed into the laboratory rather than out, keeping SV40 from Boating out the doors. It was the safest lab Berg could build; and the precautions were virtually worthless. As time went on, Berg had blood tests taken of everyone in the lab. Everyone had been infected with SV40. No one showed any ill effects. They simply hoped SV40 was as harmless as they had claimed. In search of the SV40 gene that caused cancer in mice, Berg was planning a gene transplantation experiment. He wanted to make a piece of DNA that was part bacterial genes, part bacteriophage genes, and part SV40 genes, and put it into bacteria and animal cells. Animal cells are amazingly complex and difficult to understand; they contain tens of thousands of genes interacting in a complicated fashion. Berg saw that he might be able to take animal virus genes and move them into E. coli bacteria, which was an easy system to work in. Berg could study the effects of his single experimental gene. If it worked with an SV40 virus gene, he might be able to use the *When normal cells start growing like cancerous cells in laboratory flasks, as when cells are infected with SV40, biologists call the process "transformation." 88 RECOMBINANT DNA [18.116.63.236] Project MUSE...

Share