Frederick Griffith

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For other people named Frederick Griffith, see Frederick Griffith (disambiguation).

Frederick Griffith
Liverpool University
Occupation(s)physician, pathologist, bacteriologist
Known fordiscovery of pneumococcal transformation
Scientific career
InstitutionsMinistry of Health Pathological Laboratory, Liverpool Royal Infirmary

Frederick Griffith (1877–1941) was a British

bacterial transformation, whereby a bacterium distinctly changes its form and function.[2]

He showed that Streptococcus pneumoniae, implicated in many cases of lobar pneumonia,[3] could transform from one strain into a different strain. The observation was attributed to an unidentified underlying principle,[2] later known in the Avery laboratory as the "transforming principle" (abbreviated as T. P.)[4] and identified as DNA.[5] America's leading pneumococcal researcher,

Oswald T. Avery, speculated that Griffith had failed to apply adequate controls.[6] A cautious and thorough researcher, and a reticent individual, Griffith's tendency was to publish only findings that he believed truly significant, and Griffith's findings were rapidly confirmed by researchers in Avery's laboratory.[6] His discovery was one of the first to show the central role of DNA in heredity.[5]

Early life

Double helix

Frederick Griffith was born in

Liverpool University. Thereafter, he worked at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, the Joseph Tie Laboratory, and the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis
. In 1910 Fred Griffith was hired by the local government board.

Ministry of Health office

During

Ministry of Health's Pathological Laboratory—where Griffith was medical officer. UK government spent money sparingly on the laboratory, which remained very basic, though Griffith and his colleague, William M. Scott, "could do more with a kerosene tin and a primus stove than most men could do with a palace".[6]

Griffith was sent pneumococci samples taken from patients throughout the country, amassed a large number, and would type—in other words classify—each pneumococci sample to search patterns of pneumonia epidemiology, and Griffith experimented on mice for improved understanding of its pathology.[7] Griffith performed the pivotal experiments—actually very many experiments—during the 1920s.

With outbreak of

Public Health Laboratory Service
.

Griffith's Experiment

Main article: Griffith's experiment

Pneumococci has two general forms—rough (R) and smooth (S). The S form is more

avirulent
, and does not cause pneumonia as often.

When Griffith injected heat-killed S into mice, as expected, no disease ensued. When mice were injected with a mixture of heat-killed S and live R, however, pneumonia and death ensued. The live R had transformed into S—and replicated as such—often characterized as Griffith's Experiment. More accurately, point six of Griffith's abstract reports that R tended to transform into S if a large amount of live R, alone, were injected, and that adding much heat-killed S made transformation reliable[2] Griffith also induced some pneumococci to transform back and forth.[2]

Griffith also reported transformation of

antigenicity—distinct from presence or absence of a capsule. Bacteriologist Fred Neufeld, of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany, had earlier identified the pneumococcal types, confirmed and expanded by Alphonse Dochez at Oswald Avery's laboratory in America at The Rockefeller Hospital.[7] Types I, II, and III were each a distinct antigenic grouping, whereas type IV was a catchall of varying antigenicities not matching other types.[7]

Illustrating the plasticity of Streptococcus pneumoniae, the abstract of Griffith's paper reports, "The S form of Type I has been produced from the R form of Type II, and the R form of Type I has been transformed into the S form of Type II".[2]

Impact of Griffith's Discovery

Biomedical reception

One of America's most prominent pneumococcus experts,

Rene Dubos, recruited by The Rockefeller Institute from France, later described Griffith's findings as "exploding a bombshell in the field of pneumococcal immunology".[8]

Avery's associate Martin Dawson at The Rockefeller Hospital confirmed each of Griffith's reported findings.[9][10] Even before Griffith's publication, Fred Neufeld had confirmed them as well, and was merely awaiting publication of Griffith's findings before publishing his confirmation.[6][11] Over the following years, Avery's illness, Graves' disease, kept him much out of his laboratory as other researchers in it experimented to determine, largely by process of elimination, which constituent was the transforming factor.[12]

Microbiologists endeavored during the 1930s to dispel the monomorphist tenet, prevailing as institutional dogma,[13] largely prevailing into the 21st century.[14]

Posthumous identification of transforming factor

Last days of Griffith and colleague

The first Griffith Memorial Lecture indicates that Fred Griffith died on the night of 17 April 1941

British Medical Journal failed to mention it.[17]

Avery et al then Watson & Crick

In 1944 identification of the transforming factor was published in the

Watson and Crick's 1953 paper in Nature indicating DNA's molecular structure suggesting how a molecule as seemingly simple as DNA could encode the structure of proteins—for the interpretation of DNA as genes to become widely accepted.[19][20]

Applications

Biologists made little more than speculation of Griffith's report of transformation until genetics research in 1951.

clinicians, and by the medical sector as a whole.[6]

Griffith's further work and legacy

Fred Griffith in 1936

Bacteriology

In 1931 Frederick Griffith coauthored a paper on acute

streptococcal sepsis.[25] Streptococcal infection was a frequent coinfection complicating recovery from lobar pneumonia by pneumococci infection.[26]

Medicine

By 1967 pneumococcal transformation had been shown to occur

antibiotic-resistant streptococci, already in the host, and thereby the pneumococci could become resistant to erythromycin.[28]

References

  1. ^ a b "Birth certificate Prescot PRE/40/54 for Frederick Griffith on the Lancashire BMD (Births, Marriages and Deaths on the Internet)". lancashirebmd.org.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  2. ^
    PMID 20474956
    .
  3. S2CID 23884367
    .
  4. ^ McCarty M. The Transforming Principle: Discovering that Genes are Made of DNA (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1985), p 85.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-89766-905-4
    .
  6. ^
    PMID 4143929
    .
  7. ^ a b c Lehrer S. Explorers of the Body: Dramatic Breakthroughs in Medicine from Ancient Times to Modern Science, 2nd edn (Lincoln NE: iUniverse, 2006), p 47.
  8. ^ U.S. National Library of Medicine. "The Oswald T. Avery Collection". Profiles in Science. 31 January 2007.
  9. PMID 19869670
    .
  10. ^ McCarty M. The Transforming Principle: Discovering that Genes are Made of DNA (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1985), p 79.
  11. ^ Neufeld, Fred; Levinthal, Walter (1928). "Beiträge zur variabilität der pneumokokken". Zeitschrift für Immunitätsforschung (55): 324–340. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
  12. ^ McCarty M, Transforming Principle.
  13. PMID 16559732
    .
  14. ^ Paracer S and Ahmadjian V. Symbiosis: An Introduction to Biological Associations, 2nd ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 1, subchapter 1.3, section "Bacteria as multicellular organisms", p 10.
  15. doi:10.1099/00221287-45-3-385
    .
  16. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)95174-2
    .
  17. PMC 2161843
    .
  18. PMID 19871359
    .
  19. PMID 12540908
    .
  20. ^ Anderson, ES (September 1985). "The road to DNA". New Scientist. 107 (1474): 53–4.
  21. ^ Lederberg J. "Notes on the biological interpretation of Fred Griffith's finding". American Scientist.
  22. PMID 20776393
    .
  23. PMID 20475253
    .
  24. ^ Kenneth Todar "Streptococcus pyogenes and streptococcal disease (page 1) ". Todar's Online Textbook of Bacteriology. 2008.
  25. PMID 5198333
    .
  26. doi:10.1001/jama.1933.02740230035007
    .
  27. PMID 4381631
    .
  28. PMID 4390504
    .
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