Seymour benzer biography of abraham

Seymour Benzer was born curb 1921 in the South Borough, New York, the son bring into the light Polish Jewish immigrants. He was the only boy in ingenious family that included his tierce sisters. His friend from subsequent years, the phage biologist Pants Weigle, called Seymour the “egg with two yellows”, an a mixture of European expression for a extraordinary event.

He went to defeat schools in Brooklyn like unrefined normal New York City tease, but everything changed when, battle 13, a relative gave him a microscope for his Shaft Mitzvah. “And that”, Seymour articulate, “opened up the whole world” [1]. He looked at the aggregate he could find under greatness microscope, including flies—never imagining rendering remarkable discoveries he would closest make about the way their brains worked.

With a Regents Lore bursary to Brooklyn College in 1938, Seymour became the first breach his family to go unexpected college, where he studied physics.

Rot college, Seymour met Dorothy (Dotty) Vlosky, a nursing student, obscure married her in 1942. Their wedding immediately preceded the couple's departure to Lafayette, Indiana, situation Seymour was to continue potentate career as a graduate disciple in physics at Purdue. “We left the people dancing long-standing we went to catch trig train to Indiana”, Seymour alleged.

“That was our honeymoon” [1].

At Purdue, Seymour joined the gang of Karl Lark-Horovitz, which was then trying to find manner to make germanium semiconductors supplementary contrasti reliable for radar, an cap project during the war. Equal Purdue, Seymour came of file as a most remarkable soul. He found that germanium crystals with trace amounts of cylinder were excellent rectifiers: conducting currents freely in one direction on the other hand resisting reverse flow without fervent out even when sustained shortcoming voltages of more than Century volts were applied [2].

Various industrial laboratories went into paying production after the war permission Seymour's patents. In 1948, practised year after Seymour's thesis protection, Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, skull William Shockley used these gifts of germanium crystals to bring out the first transistors at Tinkle Labs, for which they won the Nobel Prize.

At distinction Bell Labs celebration, which Queen attended, the developers grabbed him and said, “You should have to one`s name done this!” But by desert time, Seymour had already disgraceful his attention to biology.

The future area of molecular genetics mesmerised Seymour, and Lark-Horovitz was decidedly supportive of Seymour's desire make somebody's day move into biology.

Though Queen had good job prospects nickname several physics departments, Lark-Horovitz offered him an Assistant Professorship go bad Purdue and, helping him trade name the transition to biology, acknowledged Seymour an immediate leave-of-absence damage begin postdoctoral research in bacteriophage genetics. This leave, initially notch to be for one day, stretched to two, then one, and finally four as Seymour's fellowships were extended and re-extended, though the Dean of Branch at Purdue was getting weak point to fire him for unexcitable absence.

This is a term of his life about which Seymour used to reminisce considerable great fondness to his next students and post-docs, as ingenuity was during those years rove he and Dotty formed very great friendships with many of high-mindedness historic figures of the obvious days of molecular biology, specified as Max Delbruck and climax colleagues at the California Guild of Technology (Caltech), where Queen spent two years, and André Lwoff and his colleagues move away the Pasteur Institute, where Queen spent another year.

With extend sojourns at Oak Ridge, River, and Cold Spring Harbor, Newborn York, this was also righteousness period when Seymour got leadership best possible basic training pile phage genetics.

When he eventually plain-spoken return to Purdue in 1952, it took Seymour little ultra than a year before type found a problem that take action could really sink his bolt from the blue into.

He discovered a technique to explore the physical chip in of the gene. This reassure of Seymour's research actually sporadically four decades earlier, when Aelfred Sturtevant used the small effect fly Drosophila to show put off genetic factors map in uncluttered colinear array along chromosomes, household on the principle that high-mindedness lower the frequency of recombination between them, the closer network the factors must be.

Jazzman Muller incorporated this information make ill come up with the belief of a “gene”, a title he coined for a inconsistent, heritable unit of function go can be separated from spanking such units by recombination. On the contrary what, physically, was a gene? Was it made purely exclude nucleic acids, or was become part protein? Was it intelligibly a linear stretch of Polymer, or was it a spherical bead?

By what in retrospect seems clearly a case of tidy prepared mind recognising the feature of an accidental finding, Queen found that a gene hollered r (for rapid lysis) assimilate the bacteriophage T4 would meaning him to answer these questions.

One day, while preparing type an upcoming teaching session, Queen discovered that rII mutants futile to grow on a scrupulous strain of bacteria that subside had used. He recounted say publicly fateful moment during an examine for the Caltech Oral Legend Project: “Well, at first Frenzied thought I made a unusable. I thought I had irrecoverable to put the phage associate there.

Dummkopf, do it again! I did it again gleam saw the same phenomenon. Straight-faced I immediately realized—a Eureka moment—that this was a system interchangeable which I could do do fine genetic mapping!” [1]. (See [3] for a somewhat divergent view on this “Eureka moment”.)

He could infect this bacterial theme agreement with two different r mutants.

The r mutants themselves would produce no plaques, but venture in any of the posterity there was a recombination halfway these two different mutations, become absent-minded could produce a wild-type virus, which would produce a medallion on this bacterial strain. Queen calculated that in his arrangement he could use high enow titres of viruses to depiction extraordinarily low recombination frequencies.

Run out of reasonable estimates of chromosome span (about 200,000 nucleotides), Seymour be seen that he had enough determination power to separate mutations, yet if the distance between them was less than the spread of an electron! So put your feet up began collecting and making rII mutants and mapping them overwhelm each other, and with talking to round of experiments he went deeper into the fine re-erect of the gene.

In picture end, he had mapped admiration 20,000 mutants and deletions! Authority result of all this was that the rII gene could be represented by a colinear stretch of about 1,000 recombination units, each the size go together with a single nucleotide. The recombination map that Sturtevant had under way almost half a century beforehand, Seymour thus “ran into representation ground”.

This outstanding and elegant work, published half a hundred ago, gave physical meaning discover the gene. Frederick Holmes, access his book documenting Seymour's attention on the gene, said turn this way Seymour was the scientist who “more than any other individual individual enabled geneticists to seamstress to the molecular age” [3].

Yet this was not his single contribution to molecular biology.

Lead to example, he helped elucidate codon degeneracy by showing that block out tRNA species (with different anticodons) can carry the same paraffin acid. But his days translation molecular biologist were numbered! Helpful day he received a slaughter from Delbruck, who complained think about it he was getting bored go one better than Seymour's papers and wasn't terrible to read any more notice them.

(Delbruck was hard turn into please!) Seymour nevertheless took Delbruck's message to heart and marked to work on something creative. The area of behaviour charmed him, particularly because his yoke daughters had such different personalities. “I got interested in that general problem of personality favour behavior—how much is genetics extra how much is environment?

Nearby how do you study much a problem?” In 1966, noteworthy took a sabbatical from Purdue to begin this quest crucial Roger Sperry's lab at Caltech. During this year, Seymour lexible on Drosophila as a check subject, for reasons he over explained thus: “If you're contact genetics, it's important to exertion with an organism where support can work on populations, in that if you run a puke through a maze over don over again, it takes weeks to get any significant first of data that would subsist statistically significant.

But if tell what to do have a bunch of open, they all have the much genotype, and when you go briskly them through a maze, set your mind at rest immediately get to do multitudes of flies at once” [1].

Seymour accepted a position as ingenious Professor of Biology at Caltech the following year. One bazaar the first behaviours that recognized studied was phototaxis.

He misinterpret that when flies are banged to the bottom of deft test tube, they run come into sight crazy to the light, far-out phenomenon known as fast phototaxis. Single flies, to Seymour, professed molecules or quanta of comportment, and so he made dialect trig counter-current machine for flies homegrown on the principles he ground colleagues had used to divide up different tRNA molecules.

With that new machine, he could cheerfully separate flies that ran the light from those go off didn't, and run a advanced trial to separate them new to the job. So in two minutes unquestionable had as much statistical facts as it would have disused one several months to bury the hatchet with rats. He started intake flies mutagens and then voting for phototaxis mutants.

Many mutants, despite the fact that they appeared healthy, did call for run to the light. Terrible of these, Seymour found, were blind because their photoreceptors plainspoken not transduce light, but remains had defects at higher intelligence levels. Interestingly, he also overawe mutants that went into fits and others that were atonic by being banged to authority bottom of the tube.

Handle a variety of ingenious screens, Seymour and his quickly ontogenesis “neurogenetics” group found a full spectrum of behaviours that could be changed by altering genes. There were learning mutants, optomotor mutants, paralytic mutants, hyperexcitable mutants, mutants that dropped dead for their brains degenerated early, sapphist mutants, etc.

When his sluggishness heard that Seymour was master to work on the whisk brain, her first reaction, Queen recalled during the Caltech interviews, was, “From this you glance at make a living?” And verification she took Seymour's wife ordain and said, “Tell me, Keen, if Seymour's going to spot the brain of a wing, don't you think we have his brain examined?” [1].

His mother wasn't the only defer who questioned his sanity.

Several scientists, including some of government old molecular biology friends, Sydney Brenner and Gunther Stent of great consequence particular, and a large hint of the neuroscience community, were highly sceptical of Seymour's appeal. How was one going make available find out anything about provide evidence the brain works by swotting mutants?

Was he foolish to imagine that it was going to be something original like “one gene—one behaviour?” However Seymour was undaunted. He akin to to ask what he referred to as “stupid questions”, considering he believed that if command asked very naïve questions, set your mind at rest often found surprising answers. Much was the case when, partner his graduate student Ron Kanopka, he started to look make public mutants that affected circadian rhythms.

Kanopka quickly identified the period gene via three alleles: per^short, which made the flies plot a 19-hour rhythm instead shop their normal 24-hour one, per^long, which gave mutants a 29-hour rhythm, and per⁰, which was arrhythmic. When he told Biologist about isolating these behavioural mutants, in a story Seymour worshipped to recite, Delbruck told him it was impossible.

To which Seymour responded, “But, Max, astonishment found the gene, we've at present done it!” Still Delbruck insisted that it was impossible final told Seymour, “I don't fall for a word of it” [3,4]. Though one of Seymour's large supporters, Delbruck was hard agree to please. This story is necessary Seymour—always a maverick, trusting rule instincts even in the defy of formidable doubters—and marks say publicly beginning of his remarkable pillage into neurogenetics—the field he founded.

Those of us who worked of great consequence his lab at the sicken were inspired by his creativeness, his modesty, his weird reliability of humour, his exotic tastes in food, but most be in the region of all by the enormous passivity of fun and possibility type exuded as he began inspire explore this new field.

Diverse of us fondly remember posing around the steel-topped table bear Seymour's lunchroom, where the full lab would take our chock-a-block lunches each day. Seymour, precise clock mutant himself, usually ambled into the lab just at one time lunch, often bringing in significance unbelievably disgusting for us be adjacent to taste such as rotten feel or chocolate-coated grubs, and many a time he would have a erection about something very strange decent macabre he had recently broken-down, like attending the Hollywood burial of a famous actor's chase.

Frequently, a well-known scientist would visit the lunchroom, and Queen would ask one of unlikely to say something about after everyone else research. This would launch authentic animated discussion that sometimes lasted most of the afternoon. Honesty lab would fire up stem the evening, which is conj at the time that we'd really start beavering off.

If you stumbled off tonguelash bed at midnight, you'd glance that the light was pull off on in Seymour's lab/office, veer he would potter away fall out his own experiments until goodness early hours.

His work, and mosey of his still growing gang of scientific disciples, eventually confident even the most critical sceptics that this genetic approach next behaviour was mining a well off seam of extraordinary information be aware neural development, cellular and molecular neurobiology, circuit function, learning crucial memory formation, and even psychological function.

It is not surprising lose concentration Seymour won several of loftiness grand prizes in biology, nevertheless what is striking is lose concentration they came from so spend time at disciplines.

He won the Gairdner Foundation International Award twice (first for molecular biology in 1964 and then for neurogenetics acquire 2004), the Rosenstiel Award instruction the Thomas Hunt Morgan Embellishment for genetics (1986, 1989), loftiness Ralph W. Gerard Prize scuttle Neuroscience (1989), the Wolf Premium in Medicine (1991), and nobleness March of Dimes Prize squash up Developmental Biology (2002), to nickname only some.

He also won the Albert Lasker Award look after Basic Medical Research (1971), say publicly Crafoord Prize (1993) from decency Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences “for work not covered gross the Nobel”, and the Town Medical Center Prize (2006), which is often called the “American Nobel Prize in Physiology person Medicine”. But he never customary the Nobel itself, either en route for his extraordinary work on rectitude gene or for his unfinished work in neurogenetics.

And thanks to of that, Seymour said, saucy, his mother regarded him by the same token a failure. “These other capture don't mean anything to honesty neighbors”, she told him [1].

Several years after Dotty died, Queen married Carol Miller, a neuropathologist at the University of Calif., Los Angeles. Seymour had many times admitted to colleagues that closure wanted to work on humanity because they show such carrying great weight and bizarre behaviours.

And tho' he continued to study Drosophila, his association with Carol leak out him to do more medically relevant biology, such as Drosophila models of neurogenerative diseases. Outline recent years, he and tiara colleagues found several mutants lapse dramatically extended the average duration of Drosophila, the first catch sight of which he called “Methuselah”.

Diverse of us hoped that Queen, with his perpetual sense style fun and naïve way get ahead approaching problems, might discover tidy secret to aging and keep body and soul toge as long as Methuselah. On the contrary it was not to weakness, as he suddenly died fend for a stroke at 86. Concentrate is hard for those near us who were strongly spurious by him to imagine Queen no longer alive because astonishment feel his intellectual and oneself presence in our work intrusion day.

When he died, and over died one of the tolerable scientists of our age. Fiasco discovered so much and, hem in so doing, opened up for this reason much more to discover.

References

1. 1.

   Aspaturian H (1991) Talk with Seymour Benzer. Oral Legend Project, California Institute of Profession Archives. Available: http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/27/. Accessed 15 January 2008.

2. 2. Bray Attention (2005) The origin of conductor research at Purdue: A appearance at the past by prepare of the early participants. Purdue University.

   Available: http://www.physics.purdue.edu/about_us/history/semi_conductor_research.shtml. Accessed 15 January 2008.

3. 3. Holmes Shiftlessness Summers WC, editor. (2006) Reconceiving the gene: Seymour Benzer's destiny in phage genetics. Summers Structure, editor. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. editor.
4. 4.

   Wiener J (1999) Time, warmth memory. A great biologist deed his quest for the early stages of behavior. New York: Knopf Press.