Dr. Joshua Lederberg (born 1925)
Saved PDF : [HP00CH][GDrive][DOI:10.1038/scientificamerican0490-56] ( 1990 - Scientific American : "The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction ; A surprisingly simple method for making unlimited copies of DNA fragments was conceived under unlikely circumstances-during a moonlit drive through the mountains of California" by Kary B. Mullis) : "In the spring of 1984, while working on the patent, I presented a poster describing the PCR at the annual Cetus Scientific Meeting. [...]. Yet nobody seemed to be interested in my poster, and I felt increasingly anxious. [...] Finally, I noticed Joshua Lederberg, president of the Rockefeller University, nearby, and I snared him into looking at my results. Josh looked the poster over carefully and then turned his enormous head, the Nobel-laureated head, the head that had deduced in 1946 that bacteria could have sexual intercourse. "Does it work?" He seemed amused. Pleased, I confirmed that it did, and we talked for a long time. At one point he mentioned that about 20 years previously, after Kornberg had discovered DNA polymerase, the two of them had considered the notion that the enzyme could somehow be harnessed to make large quantities of DNA.They had not figured out exactly how to do it, however. I reminded him that oligonucleotides were not readily available at that time and that there was hardly any DNA sequence information either. But he looked back at my poster with an expression that I have almost come to expect. I think that Josh, after seeing the utter simplicity of the PCR, was perhaps the first person to feel what is now an almost universal first response to it among molecular biologists and other DNA workers." )
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Cetus Corporation ( ... )
Born : Kary Banks Mullis on December 28, 1944 in Lenoir, North Carolina, U.S.
Died : August 7, 2019 (aged 74) in Newport Beach, California, U.S.[1]
Nationality : American
Alma mater :
Georgia Institute of Technology (BS, 1966)
University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 1973)
Known for : Invention of polymerase chain reaction
Awards "
William Allan Award (1990)
Robert Koch Prize (1992)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1993)
Japan Prize (1993)[2]
Scientific career
Fields : Molecular biology
Thesis : Schizokinen: structure and synthetic work (1973)
Doctoral advisor : J. B. Neilands
Kary Banks Mullis (December 28, 1944 – August 7, 2019) was an American biochemist. In recognition of his role in the invention of the polymerase chain reaction(PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith[3]and was awarded the Japan Prize in the same year. PCR became a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR."[4]
Mullis attracted controversy for denying humans' role in climate change and for expressing doubts that HIV causes AIDS.[5][1][6]
Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains,[7] on December 28, 1944. His family had a background in farming in this rural area. As a child, Mullis said, he was interested in observing organisms in the countryside.[8] He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina,[8] where he attended Dreher High School,[9]graduating in the class of 1962. His interest in chemistry started when he learned how to chemically synthesize and build solid fuel propulsion rockets as a high school student during the 1950s.[10]
He earned a B.S. in chemistry[7] from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he married his first wife and started a business.[11] He earned his Ph.D. in 1973 in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in J. B. Neilands' laboratory, which focused on synthesis and structure of bacterial iron transporter molecules.[12] Although he published a sole-author paper in Nature in the field of astrophysics in 1968, he struggled to pass his oral exams (with a colleague recalling that "He didn’t get his propositions right. He didn’t know general biochemistry"), and his dissertation was only accepted after several friends pitched in to "cut all the whacko stuff out of it" while his advisor lobbied the committee to reconsider its initial decision. Mullis himself believed that it was the Nature article that greased the wheels with the committee.[13][14]
His doctoral dissertation was on the structure of the bacterial siderophore schizokinen (“Schizokinen: Structure and Synthetic Work”).[15] J.B. Neilands was known for his groundbreaking work on siderophores, and Mullis was a part of that with his characterization of schizokinen.[16] Following his graduation, Mullis completed postdoctoral fellowships in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center (1973-1977) and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (1977-1979).[17]
After receiving his doctorate, Mullis briefly left science to write fiction before accepting the University of Kansas fellowship.[11] During his postdoctoral work, he managed a bakery for two years.[4] Mullis returned to science at the encouragement of Berkeley friend and colleague Thomas White, who secured Mullis' UCSF position and later helped Mullis land a position with the biotechnology company [Cetus Corporation] of Emeryville, California.[8][4] Despite little experience in molecular biology, Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years, ultimately serving as head of the DNA synthesis lab under White, then the firm's director of molecular and biological research; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure.[18]
Mullis acquired a reputation for erratic behavior at Cetus, once threatening to bring a gun to work; he also engaged in "public lovers' quarrels" with his then-girlfriend (a fellow chemist at the company) and "nearly came to blows with another scientist" at a staff party.[13]According to White, "It definitely put me in a tough spot. His behavior was so outrageous that the other scientists thought that the only reason I didn't fire him outright was that he was a friend of mine."[13]
After resigning from Cetus in 1986, Mullis served as director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc. in San Diego for two years. While inventing a UV-sensitive ink at Xytronyx, he became skeptical of the existence of the ozone hole.
Thereafter, Mullis worked intermittently as a consultant for multiple corporations and institutions on nucleic acid chemistry and as an expert witness specializing in DNA profiling.[17][4] While writing a National Institutes of Health grant progress report on the development of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) test for Specialty Labs, he became skeptical that HIV was the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).[19] In 1992, Mullis founded a business to sell pieces of jewelry containing the amplified DNA of deceased famous people such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.[20][21] That year, he also founded Atomic Tags in La Jolla, California. The venture sought to develop technology using atomic-force microscopy and bar-coded antibodies tagged with heavy metals to create highly multiplexed, parallel immunoassays.
Mullis was a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.[22] In 2014, he was named a distinguished researcher at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in Oakland, California.[23]
PCR and other inventions
Main articles: Taq Polymerase and History of polymerase chain reaction
In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corporation as a chemist.[11] As Mullis told it, while driving in the vicinity of his country home in Mendocino County with his girlfriend, who also was a chemist at Cetus, he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase; a technique that would allow rapid amplification of a small stretch of DNA and become a standard procedure in molecular biology laboratories.[11] Longtime professional benefactor and supervisor Thomas White reassigned Mullis from his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time after the technique was met with skepticism by their colleagues.[11][13] Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR on December 16, 1985, but the staff remained circumspect as he continued to produce ambiguous results amid alleged methodological problems, including a perceived lack of "appropriate controls and repetition."[11][13] In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the December 16 breakthrough did not make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him: "I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither [assistant] Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome."[11]
Other Cetus scientists who were regarded as "top-notch experimentalists",[13] including Randall Saiki, Henry Erlich, and Norman Arnheim, were placed on parallel PCR projects to work on determining if PCR could amplify a specific human gene (betaglobin) from genomic DNA. Saiki generated the needed data and Erlich authored the first paper to include utilization of the technique,[4] while Mullis was still working on the paper that would describe PCR itself.[11] Mullis' 1985 paper with Saiki and Erlich, "Enzymatic Amplification of β-globin Genomic Sequences and Restriction Site Analysis for Diagnosis of Sickle Cell Anemia" — the polymerase chain reaction invention (PCR) — was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2017.[24][25]
A drawback of the technique was that the DNA polymerase in the reaction was destroyed by the high heat used at the start of each replication cycle and had to be replaced. In 1986, Saiki started to use Thermophilus aquaticus (Taq) DNA polymerase to amplify segments of DNA. The Taq polymerase was heat resistant and only needed to be added to the reaction once, making the technique dramatically more affordable and subject to automation. This modification of Mullis' invention revolutionized biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and forensics. According to University of California, Berkeley biologist David Bilder, "PCR revolutionized everything. It really superpowered molecular biology—which then transformed other fields, even distant ones like ecology and evolution. … It’s impossible to overstate PCR’s impact. The ability to generate as much DNA of a specific sequence as you want, starting from a few simple chemicals and some temperature changes—it’s just magical."[13] Although he received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention, the company's later sale of the patent to Roche Molecular Systems for $300 million would lead Mullis to condemn White and members of the parallel team as "vultures."[11][13]
Mullis also invented a UV-sensitive plastic that changes color in response to light.
He founded Altermune LLC in 2011 to pursue new ideas on the immune system.[26] Mullis described the company's novel technology in a presentation:
It is a method using specific synthetic chemical linkers to divert an immune response from its nominal target to something completely different which you would right now like to be temporarily immune to. Let's say you just got exposed to a new strain of the flu. You're already immune to alpha-1,3-galactosyl-galactose bonds. All humans are. Why not divert a fraction of those antibodies to the influenza strain you just picked up? A chemical linker synthesized with an alpha-1,3-gal-gal bond on one end and a DNA aptamer devised to bind specifically to the strain of influenza you have on the other end will link anti-alpha-Gal antibodies to the influenza virus and presto!--you have fooled your immune system into attacking the new virus.[7][27]
In a TED Talk, Mullis describes how the US Government paid $500,000 for Mullis to use this new technology against Anthrax, which worked. The treatment was 100% effective, compared to the previous Anthrax treatment which was 40% effective.[27]
Another proof-of-principle of this technology, re-targeting pre-existing antibodies to the surface of a pathogenic strep bacteria using an alpha-gal modified aptamer ("alphamer"), was published in 2015 in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego.[28][29] Mullis was inspired to fight this particular strep bacteria because it had killed his friend.[27]
Accreditation of the PCR technique
A concept similar to that of PCR had been described before Mullis' work. Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana and Kjell Kleppe, a Norwegian scientist, authored a paper 17 years earlier describing a process they termed "repair replication" in the Journal of Molecular Biology.[30] Using repair replication, Kleppe duplicated and then quadrupled a small synthetic molecule with the help of two primers and DNA polymerase. The method developed by Mullis used repeated thermal cycling, which allowed the rapid and exponential amplification of large quantities of any desired DNA sequence from an extremely complex template. Later a heat-stable DNA polymerase was incorporated into the process.
His co-workers at Cetus, who were embittered by his abrupt departure from the company,[11] contested that Mullis was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in PCR. However, other scientists have written that the "full potential [of PCR] was not realized" until Mullis' work in 1983,[31] and that Mullis' colleagues failed to see the potential of the technique when he presented it to them.[20] As a result, some controversy surrounds the balance of credit that should be given to Mullis versus the team at Cetus.[4] In practice, credit has accrued to both the inventor and the company (although not its individual workers) in the form of a Nobel Prize and a $10,000 Cetus bonus for Mullis and $300 million for Cetus when the company sold the patent to Roche Molecular Systems. After DuPont lost out to Roche on that sale, the company unsuccessfully disputed Mullis' patent on the alleged grounds that PCR had been previously described in 1971.[11] Mullis and Erlich took Cetus' side in the case, and Khorana refused to testify for DuPont; the jury upheld Mullis' patent in 1991.[11] However, in February 1999, the patent of Hoffman-La Roche (United States Patent No. 4,889,818) was found by the courts to be unenforceable, after Dr. Thomas Kunkel testified in the case Hoffman-La Roche v. Promega Corporation[32] on behalf of the defendants (Promega Corporation) that "prior art" (i.e. articles on the subject of Taq polymerase published by other groups prior to the work of Gelfand and Stoffel, and their patent application regarding the purification of Taq polymerase) existed, in the form of two articles, published by Alice Chien et al. in 1976,[33] and A. S. Kaledin et al. in 1980.[34]
The anthropologist Paul Rabinow wrote a book on the history of the PCR method in 1996 (titled Making PCR) in which he discussed whether Mullis "invented" PCR or "merely" came up with the concept of it. Rabinow, a Foucault scholar interested in issues of the production of knowledge, used the topic to argue against the idea that scientific discovery is the product of individual work, writing, "Committees and science journalists like the idea of associating a unique idea with a unique person, the lone genius. PCR is thought by some to be an example of teamwork, but by others as the genius of one who was smart enough to put things together which were present to all, but overlooked. For Mullis, the light bulb went off, but for others it did not. This is consistent with the idea, that the prepared (educated) mind who is careful to observe and not overlook, is what separates the genius scientist from his many also smart scientists. The proof is in the fact that the person who has the light bulb go off never forgets the "Ah!" experience, while the others never had this photochemical reaction go off in their brains."[35]
Mullis was quoted saying "the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas" has hurt science.[11] He believed that "science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out," not for what they actually produce.[11]
Mullis wrote that he began to question the AIDS consensus while writing a NIH grant progress report and being unable to find a peer-reviewed reference that HIV was the cause of AIDS.[19][36] He published an alternative hypothesis for AIDS in 1994,[37] and questioned the scientific validity of the link between HIV and AIDS, leading some[who?] to label him an AIDS denialist.[38][39] Mullis has been criticized[by whom?] for his association with HIV skeptic Peter Duesberg,[40] claiming that AIDS is an arbitrary diagnosis used when HIV antibodies are found in a patient's blood.[41] Seth Kalichman, AIDS researcher and author of Denying AIDS, lists Mullis "among the who's who of AIDS pseudoscientists".[42] In 2006, Mullis wrote the foreword to the book What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? by Christine Maggiore,[36] an HIV-positive AIDS denialist whose 3-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 2005, and who died herself of an AIDS-related illness in 2008.[43] A 2007 article in Skeptical Inquirerdescribed Mullis as an "AIDS denialist with scientific credentials [who] has never done any scientific research on HIV or AIDS".[44]However, he consulted for Specialty Labs in Santa Monica, developing a nucleic acid-based HIV test.[citation needed] According to California Magazine, Mullis' HIV skepticism influenced Thabo Mbeki's denialist policymaking throughout his tenure as president of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, contributing to as many as 330,000 unnecessary deaths.[13] In 2010, Mullis gave a talk at Google at which he was asked about his controversial views on AIDS and HIV. Mullis said "I'm come to the conclusion... that the thing that causes AIDS is not a species of the retroviridae, it's the whole genus. The people who get sick have a whole lot of different versions...that's my feeling."[45]
A 2007 New York Times article listed Mullis as one of several scientists who, after success in their area of research, go on to make unfounded, sometimes bizarre statements in other areas.[46] In his 1998 humorous autobiography proclaiming his maverick viewpoint, Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence supporting climate change and ozone depletion, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and asserted his belief in astrology.[19][47] Mullis claimed climate change and HIV/AIDS theories were promulgated as a form of racketeering by environmentalists, government agencies, and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence.[19] The medical and scientific consensus considers these hypotheses as pseudoscience, HIV having been conclusively proven to be the cause of AIDS[48][49] and global warming strongly shown to be caused by human activities.[50][51][52]
Mullis practiced clandestine chemistry throughout his graduate studies, specializing in the synthesis of LSD; according to White, "I knew he was a good chemist because he'd been synthesizing hallucinogenic drugs at Berkeley."[13] He detailed his experiences synthesizing and testing various psychedelic amphetamines and a difficult trip on DET in his autobiography.[19] In a Q&A interview published in the September 1994 issue of California Monthly, Mullis said, "Back in the 1960s and early 1970s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took."[53][verification needed] During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".[54]
Mullis was a surfer[55] and played the guitar. He married four times[11] and had a total of three children by two of his wives. At the time of his death, he had two grandchildren and was survived by his fourth wife, Nancy Cosgrove Mullis. Mullis died at the age of 74 from complication of pneumonia[1][13][56] on August 7, 2019, at his home in Newport Beach, California.[1][57]
Luc Montagnier, Nobel laureate who has promoted controversial and unverified health claims
Paul Rabinow, Making PCR: a story of biotechnology (University of Chicago Press, 1996). ISBN 0-226-70147-6
Anthony Liversidge, "Kary Mullis, the great gene machine" at the Wayback Machine (archived January 21, 2001), Omnimagazine (April 1992).
Kary Mullis, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field. Vintage Books (1998). ISBN 0-679-44255-3.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Kary Mullis
Kary Mullis (personal webpage).
Patent portfolio, Directory inventor, archived from the original on January 10, 2013.
Kary B. Mullis on Nobelprize.org
Interviews
Interview, Nobel Prize committee, 2005.
Klipfel, Sarah (1998), Interview, archived from the original on July 6, 2005 regarding his views on HIV/AIDS.
INVITED LECTURES
BOOKS
PUBLICATIONS
Scientific American : Vol. 262, No. 4 (APRIL 1990), pp. 56-65 (10 pages)
PMID: 2315679 / DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican0490-56
Saved PDF : [HP00CH][GDrive][DOI:10.1038/scientificamerican0490-56]
Page 65 text :
In the spring of 1984, while working on the patent, I presented a poster describing the PCR at the annual Cetus Scientific Meeting. These meetings were always fun, because Cetus had some first-rate scientific advisers, and I was looking forward to talking with them about my invention.
Yet nobody seemed to be interested in my poster, and I felt increasingly anxious. People would glance at it and keep walking. Finally, I noticed Joshua Lederberg, president of the Rockefeller University, nearby, and I snared him into looking at my results. Josh looked the poster over carefully and then turned his enormous head, the Nobel-laureated head, the head that had deduced in 1946 that bacteria could have sexual intercourse. "Does it work?" He seemed amused.
Pleased, I confirmed that it did, and we talked for a long time. At one point he mentioned that about 20 years previously, after Kornberg had discovered DNA polymerase, the two of them had considered the notion that the enzyme could somehow be harnessed to make large quantities of DNA.They had not figured out exactly how to do it, however. I reminded him that oligonucleotides were not readily available at that time and that there was hardly any DNA sequence information either.
But he looked back at my poster with an expression that I have almost come to expect. I think that Josh, after seeing the utter simplicity of the PCR, was perhaps the first person to feel what is now an almost universal first response to it among molecular biologists and other DNA workers: "Why didn't I think of that?" And nobody really knows why; surely I don't. I just ran into it one night.
1999-04-19-the-guardian-the-maverick.pdf
1999-04-19-the-guardian-the-maverick-img-1.jpg
Only rarely can you say of a scientist that, without him or her, the world would be a different place. But it is true of Kary Mullis, who is an integral part of the history of the genetic revolution. Mullis is an unlikely member of the biologist's team, because he is a chemist, and one with leanings towards mathematics and physics. He has an animated curiosity and a mind which roams over many areas of science. He has invented a plastic which changes colour when exposed to ultra-violet light; he dabbles in astrology, talks about 'astral plains' and LSD, and has some original ideas about Aids (he believes that the disease is not caused by HIV).
I met him in a friend's house in a small town near his roots in North Carolina. He arrived awkwardly, smiling and leaking energy like an adolescent. He is polite in the Southern way, and has the accent of his childhood, although his speech has been influenced by West Coast surfers.
He doesn't look at you much, except when he concentrates on a question; then his eyes have an open, hypnotic quality which makes you want to look away. He likes to drink and sipped from a large glass of red wine. His face occasionally breaks into a broad smile, as if he is touched by the pleasure of his own ideas.
Back in April 1983, Mullis had applied his brilliant, unkempt mind to the problems chemists think about when they are bored. He was driving up to his cabin in Anderson Valley, California, where the redwoods grow. He began to think about a particular problem. Suddenly, he experienced a rush of thought which was to change biology and open up great possibilities, although he had no idea of its impact at the time.
He was conscious of a revelation unfolding while he stared at the lights before him on the road. He had a vision of a Romantic poet - Shelley walking in the west wind. This is how he describes it in his book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (Bloomsbury pounds 12.99): 'My little silver Honda's front tyres pulled us through the mountains. My mind drifted back into the lab. DNA chains coiled and floated. Lurid blue and pink images of electric molecules injected themselves somewhere between the mountain and my eyes.' The problem was how to find a chemical process to target specific lengths of DNA in billions of base pairs of genetic code. How could he get a usable quantity of this fragile, tangled material? 'I had to arrange a series of chemical reactions, the result of which would stretch the DNA,' he writes. His mind ran through a series of reactions which would define and isolate the target. Then he realised that one of the reactions, involving polymerase, a naturally occurring enzyme that takes part in forming DNA, would double the target sequence. That's its job - copying DNA naturally. And it would repeat and repeat, like the computer programs Mullis was then writing .
He stopped the car, found a pencil stub and paper, and began to calculate. What he was contemplating was a chain reaction and it was clear that, if it worked, it could generate a huge number of copies of the target DNA very quickly. (Today PCR machines can produce 100 billion copies of a targeted sequence in an afternoon.) The process is hard to understand if you are not a scientist, but to Mullis it seemed shockingly simple, so simple that he assumed it must have been already invented. Not so. All the constituent parts of PCR were known for 15 years and waiting to be put together. That was why Mullis was able to invent the chain reaction while driving a car, and not in some lab where each step had to be tested.
It took a while for Cetus Lab, where Mullis worked, to make PCR a reality, and it subsequently challenged Mullis's authorship, saying that it had contributed as much to the development of the process as he had. At length, when another company, the multinational giant Du Pont, tried to claim that PCR had been developed 10 years before in its laboratories, Cetus employees had to back Mullis's account of the invention in court. Either that or lose the hugely profitable patent.
He was subsequently awarded the Nobel prize, but was only given a $10,000 bonus by Cetus. It is fair to say that relations between Mullis and his former colleagues are still sour.
I asked him whether PCR and its contribution to the efforts to map the human genome bothered him.
It was PCR which allowed the rapid identification and amplification of parts of the human genome which will be analysed and used to change humanity.
'I am basically an optimist about having control of future generations. A lot of people don't think about this, but when I am choosing a wife I am basically choosing some traits I would like my children to have. You don't just randomly mate with a female -unless you're in college -you study her traits and make a selection. We will be doing this at a slightly different level, that's all. A lot of people have a fear about this, but we've been doing it for 2 million years.' I suggested that the selection of a mate, which relied on the mate's compliance, was not quite the same as isolating and inserting genes for intelligence, blue eyes or a talent for interior decoration into an embryo.
'Why not?' he said. 'We have been breeding selectively for all time. You would like everyone to be funnier, wouldn't you? Be smarter, happier, more successful, better at sports, have a better intellect - wouldn't you? Those kinds of options will be available to future parents and it doesn't bother me. Hell, I love smart, beautiful, funny women and I wish there could be more of them.' Mullis is in his fifties, but there is a lot of the boy prodigy about him and he used to have a reputation for hell raising. Scientific conferences all over the world were enlivened by his behaviour. He described how he had been 'skinny-dipping' at one conference and had his clothes hidden by Craig Venter, now one the magi of the Human Genome Project.
'Craig was sitting in a hot tub and I walked up to him and I held a chair over his head and I said Craig, if you don't tell me where my clothes are I am going to kill you. I think he believed me because he went and found my clothes.' Venter was wise. There is something extreme about Mullis, who as a boy made his own explosives and detonated them in the backyard.
Mullis's mind is often in a state of free association, but this doesn't seem to stop him making important connections. He has a good grasp of the history of science, especially the extraordinary leaps in his professional life.
'It is interesting that biochemistry developed alongside computers. If computers had not come along at about the same time as the structure of DNA was discovered, there would be no biochemistry. You always needed the computer to process the information. Without it we would have rooms and rooms full of monks writing out the sequences.' You could almost say the same about PCR. Life without PCR would be very different. It is used in police investigations to identify fragments of DNA to prove a suspect's presence at a crime scene. It has become an essential part of medical diagnostics, and in archaeology it has opened enormous possibilities. (The PCR process was the basis of the plot of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, in which the DNA of dinosaurs was extracted from a mosquito preserved in amber.) To the Human Genome Project, Mullis has contributed one of three important elements (computing and the sequencing method being the other two). Without his drive through California none of it would be possible.
Now he has plunged into another project, a still-secret method of diagnosing illness by machine.
'A doctor is meant to work out what's the matter with his patient in 18 minutes,' he said. 'There are not a lot of options you can cover in that time, not a lot of questions you can ask.' In Star Trek, he points out, they have a doctor who is a hologram, and not human. 'That makes sense to me.'
2002 (Aug/Sep)
https://www.genomeweb.com/archive/short-reads-7
2002-09-01-genomeweb-com-archive-short-reads-7.pdf
Craig Venter, who has been decorated with more awards than you’re interested in tracking, recently was presented with the Rell Sun award by the UCSD Cancer Center Luau and Longboard Invitational, one of the biggest draws of surfing legends in the world. Along with the recognition of his surfer fans, Venter received the award in the presence of friend and fellow surfer, Kary Mullis.