With a Foreword via Sydney Brenner (Nobel laureate in body structure or drugs, 2002)

This biography info the lifetime of Paul Berg (Emeritus Professor at Stanford University), tracing Berg's lifestyles from start, in 1926, to the current, with exact emphasis on his huge, immense medical contributions, together with being the 1st to increase expertise that ended in gene cloning technological know-how. In 1980, Berg obtained a Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work.

In addition to his contributions within the study laboratory, Berg orchestrated and oversaw a old assembly at Asilomar, California that situated on a threatening controversy surrounding the belief by means of a few of the damaging capability of recombinant DNA know-how. This assembly did a lot to stop this controversy and to install position the legislation of recombinant DNA paintings, hence placing fears to rest.

The recombinant DNA controversy was once a ancient end result of the invention of gene cloning. significantly, it represented a paramount instance of medical foresight and due diligence through the medical neighborhood, instead of by way of regulatory entities within the usa and plenty of different nations. the final word attractiveness of gene/DNA cloning ended in a brand new period of recent biology that flourishes to the present.

This ebook is aimed basically at scientists and people in education. The publication strives to easily offer info for the overall reader, yet isn't really particularly adapted for a normal examining audience.

While many books hide the recombinant DNA controversy, none have satisfactorily addressed this old interval and are usually contradictory in regards to the many who is, where's, and why's concerned. also, the good majority of those have been written through non-scientists. This biography of Paul Berg presents entry to various archived letters and records at Stanford collage now not formerly addressed, and to the chronology of occasions as recalled and documented via him, in addition to different key personalities, lots of whom have been interviewed.

Contents:

• Part I:
  • Growing Up in Brooklyn
  • The crucial Paul Berg
  • College — and international struggle II
  • Western Reserve University
  • Copenhagen
• Part II:
  • Washington college, St. Louis
  • Discovering move RNA
  • Stanford college — and Its Refurbished division of Biochemistry
  • Transcription and Translation: New Directions
• Part III:
  • Making Recombinant DNA — the 1st Faltering Steps
  • Making Recombinant DNA — a tremendous Breakthrough
  • EcoRI restrict Endonuclease — an enormous Breakthrough
  • “Coincidence is the notice We Use once we cannot See the Levers and Pulleys”
  • Yet one other Stanford Contribution
• Part IV:
  • An historical assembly in Hawaii
  • The Recombinant DNA Controversy
  • A Momentous Gordon learn Conference
  • Making Recombinant Molecules with Frog DNA
  • The Controversy Heats Up
  • Asilomar II
  • The Dissenters: a distinct aspect of View
  • The Aftermath
  • Legislative and Revisionist demanding situations to Recombinant DNA
  • Asilomar II — classes Learned
• Part V:
  • The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
  • Commercializing the Technology
  • Life is going on
  • The “Retirement” Years
  • Public coverage concerns — and different Interests
  • Personal Challenges

Readership: Researchers, graduate scholars, undergraduates in lifestyles sciences, medication and chemistry and lay public.