This post is going to be a little more about the history of science rather than any “hard” biochemistry , but I thought it would tie in nicely with the movie we all watched on Wednesday on how Sanger sequencing works.
Sanger sequencing, as we all saw, is gorgeous in its design, using the principles of organic chemistry (can the lack of a single hydroxyl group on the 3′ carbon really be the reason why this method works?), fluorescent imaging, of electrophoresis, etc to solve a problem that was previously thought to be unsolvable? I wonder how people in Sanger’s lifetime felt about “reading’ genetic code. The human eye can barely detect a cell colony growing on a petri dish – how would they ever even consider “reading” the genetic code off strands of DNA?
Frederick Sanger passed away only very recently – on November 19 of last year. I know this because I was taking a science journalism class and had to write a pretend obituary for myself; I looked up some sample obits to get a sense of how they should be written.
In looking up obits, I remember coming across Frederick Sanger – and recalling a brief mention of the name in Genetics, I clicked. Turns out that was a great decision because his life was very interesting – can you imagine being TWICE a Nobel Laureate? It really helps one grow in appreciation for just how revolutionary these methods have been for science. Here’s the obituary of Sanger via the New York Times (which is, as morbid as it sound, a REALLY great source to learn about some amazing, accomplished, sometimes infamous, people and all they accomplished). Definitely would give the piece a read, the link is below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/frederick-sanger-two-time-nobel-winning-scientist-dies-at-95.html?_r=0