The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee Page 0,249

(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), 202.

131 extra cells had somehow disappeared: Ning Yang and Ing Swie Goping, Apoptosis (San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Life Sciences, 2013), “C. elegans and Discovery of the Caspases.”

he called it apoptosis: John F. R. Kerr, Andrew H. Wyllie, and Alastair R. Currie, “Apoptosis: A basic biological phenomenon with wide-ranging implications in tissue kinetics,” British Journal of Cancer 26, no. 4 (1972): 239.

In another mutant, dead cells: This mutant was initially identified by Ed Hedgecock. Robert Horvitz, author interview, 2013.

Horvitz and Sulston discovered: J. E. Sulston and H. R. Horvitz, “Post-embryonic cell lineages of the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans,” Developmental Biology 56. no. 1 (March 1977): 110–56. Also see Judith Kimble and David Hirsh, “The postembryonic cell lineages of the hermaphrodite and male gonads in Caenorhabditis elegans,” Developmental Biology 70, no. 2 (1979): 396–417.

But even natural ambiguity: Judith Kimble, “Alterations in cell lineage following laser ablation of cells in the somatic gonad of Caenorhabditis elegans,” Developmental Biology 87, no. 2 (1981): 286–300.

The British way, Brenner wrote: W. J. Gehring, Master Control Genes in Development and Evolution: The Homeobox Story (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 56.

began to study the effects of sharp perturbations on cell fates: The method had been pioneered by John White and John Sulston. Robert Horvitz, author interview, 2013.

As one scientist described it: Gary F. Marcus, The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2004), “Chapter 4: Aristotle’s Impetus.”

The geneticist Antoine Danchin: Antoine Danchin, The Delphic Boat: What Genomes Tell Us (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Some genes, Dawkins suggests: Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 105.

PART THREE: “THE DREAMS OF GENETICISTS”

Progress in science depends on new techniques: Sydney Brenner, “Life sentences: Detective Rummage investigates,” Scientist—the Newspaper for the Science Professional 16, no. 16 (2002): 15.

If we are right . . . it is possible to induce: “DNA as the ‘stuff of genes’: The discovery of the transforming principle, 1940–1944,” Oswald T. Avery Collection, National Institutes of Health, profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/CC/p-nid/157.

“Crossing Over”

A biochemist by training: Details of Paul Berg’s education and sabbatical are from the author’s interview with Paul Berg, 2013; and “The Paul Berg Papers,” Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine, profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CD/.

a “piece of bad news wrapped in a protein coat”: M. B. Oldstone, “Rous-Whipple Award Lecture. Viruses and diseases of the twenty-first century,” American Journal of Pathology 143, no. 5 (1993): 1241.

Unlike many viruses, Berg learned: David A. Jackson, Robert H. Symons, and Paul Berg, “Biochemical method for inserting new genetic information into DNA of simian virus 40: circular SV40 DNA molecules containing lambda phage genes and the galactose operon of Escherichia coli,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 69, no. 10 (1972): 2904–09.

Peter Lobban, had written a thesis: P. E. Lobban, “The generation of transducing phage in vitro,” (essay for third PhD examination, Stanford University, November 6, 1969).

Avery, after all, had boiled it: Oswald T. Avery, Colin M. MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty. “Studies on the chemical nature of the substance inducing transformation of pneumococcal types: Induction of transformation by a desoxyribonucleic acid fraction isolated from pneumococcus type III,” Journal of Experimental Medicine 79, no. 2 (1944): 137–58.

“none of the individual procedures, manipulations, and reagents: P. Berg and J. E. Mertz, “Personal reflections on the origins and emergence of recombinant DNA technology,” Genetics 184, no. 1 (2010): 9–17, doi:10.1534/genetics.109.112144.

In the winter of 1970, Berg and David Jackson: Jackson, Symons, and Berg, “Biochemical method for inserting new genetic information into DNA of simian virus 40,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 69, no. 10 (1972): 2904–09.

In June 1972, Mertz traveled from Stanford: Kathi E. Hanna, ed., Biomedical politics (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1991), 266.

“You can stop splitting the atom”: Erwin Chargaff, “On the dangers of genetic meddling,” Science 192, no. 4243 (1976): 938.

“My first reaction was: this was absurd”: “Reaction to Outrage over Recombinant DNA, Paul Berg.” DNA Learning Center, doi:dnalc.org/view/15017-Reaction-to-outrage-over-recombinant-DNA-Paul-Berg.html.

Dulbecco had even offered to drink SV40: Shane Crotty, Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore’s Life in Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 95.

“In truth, I knew the risk was little”: Paul Berg, author interview, 2013.

“Janet really made the process vastly more efficient”: Ibid.

Boyer had arrived in San Francisco in the summer of ’66: Details of the story of Boyer and Cohen come from the following resources: John Archibald, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Evolution of Complex Life