George Beadle

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George Wells Beadle
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George Beadle
One gene-one enzyme hypothesis
  • Gene
    • regulation of biochemical events within cells
    Awards
    Scientific career
    FieldsGenetics
    Institutions
    ThesisGenetical and Cytological Studies of Mendelian Asynapsis in Zea mays (1930)
    Doctoral advisor
    Other academic advisors
    Doctoral students
    Other notable students

    George Wells Beadle (October 22, 1903 – June 9, 1989) was an American geneticist. In 1958 he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells.[3][4] He also served as the 7th President of the University of Chicago.[5]

    Beadle and Tatum's key experiments involved exposing the bread

    One gene-one enzyme hypothesis.[6][7][8]

    Education and early life

    George Wells Beadle was born in

    Zea mays.[10] For this work he obtained, in 1931, his Doctor of Philosophy degree.[10]

    Career and research

    In 1931 Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, where he remained from 1931 until 1936. During this period he continued his work on Indian corn and began, in collaboration with Professors Theodosius Dobzhansky, S. Emerson, and Alfred Sturtevant, work on crossing-over in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.[citation needed]

    In 1935 Beadle visited Paris for six months to work with Professor Boris Ephrussi at the Institut de Biologie physico-chimique. Together they began the study of the development of eye pigment in Drosophila which later led to the work on the biochemistry of the genetics of the fungus Neurospora for which Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum were together awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

    In 1936 Beadle left the California Institute of Technology to become Assistant Professor of Genetics at

    one gene-one enzyme hypothesis, which, with certain qualifications and refinements, has remained essentially valid to the present day. As recalled by Horowitz,[12] the work of Beadle and Tatum also demonstrated that genes have an essential role in biosynthesis
    . At the time of the experiments (1941), non-geneticists still generally believed that genes governed only trivial biological traits, such as eye color, and bristle arrangement in fruit flies, while basic biochemistry was determined in the cytoplasm by unknown processes. Also, many respected geneticists thought that gene action was far too complicated to be resolved by any simple experiment. Thus Beadle and Tatum brought about a fundamental revolution in our understanding of genetics.

    In 1946 Beadle returned to the California Institute of Technology as Professor of Biology and Chairman of the Division of Biology. Here he remained until January 1961 when he was elected Chancellor of the University of Chicago and, in the autumn of the same year, President of this university.

    After retiring, Beadle undertook a remarkable experiment in

    Teosinte/Maize crosses. Then he crossed these progeny with each other. He looked for the rate of appearance of parent phenotypes among this second generation. The vast majority of these plants were intermediate between maize and Teosinte in their features, but about 1 in 500 of the plants were identical to either the parent maize or the parent teosinte. Using the mathematics of Mendelian genetics, he calculated that this showed a difference between maize and teosinte of about 5 or 6 genetic loci. This demonstration was so compelling that most scientists now agree that Teosinte is the wild progenitor of maize.[13][14]

    During his career, Beadle has received many honors. These include the Honorary Doctor of Science of the following Universities: Yale (1947), Nebraska (1949), Northwestern University (1952), Rutgers University (1954), Kenyon College (1955), Wesleyan University (1956), the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford, England (1959), Pomona College (1961), and Lake Forest College (1962). In 1962 he was also given the honorary degree of LL.D. by the University of California, Los Angeles. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946.[15] He also received the Lasker Award of the American Public Health Association (1950), the Dyer Award (1951), the Emil Christian Hansen Prize of Denmark (1953), the Albert Einstein Commemorative Award in Science (1958), the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1958 with Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg, the National Award of the American Cancer Society (1959), and the Kimber Genetics Award of the National Academy of Sciences (1960).

    Awards and honors

    In addition to the Nobel Prize, Beadle received numerous other awards. Beadle was a member of several learned societies, he was a

    Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) of London,[2] the Danish Royal Academy of Science and the American Philosophical Society.[17]

    The

    Millard, Nebraska (Part of the Millard Public Schools district) was named after him. It opened in 2001. The Beadle Center, which houses the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
    , is also named after George Beadle.

    Personal life

    Beadle was married twice. By his first wife he had a son, David, who now lives at The Hague, the Netherlands.[citation needed] His second wife, Muriel McClure (1915–1994), a well-known writer, was born in California. Beadle's chief hobbies were rockclimbing, skiing, and gardening. He is credited with the first ascent of Mount Doonerak in Alaska.[18] He was a member of FarmHouse fraternity while at the University of Nebraska.[citation needed]

    Beadle died on June 9, 1989. He was an atheist.[19]

    References

    1. ^ a b c d "DevTree - George Wells Beadle". academictree.org.
    2. ^
      PMID 11615361
      .
    3. ^ George W. Beadle — Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
    4. PMID 13135519
      .
    5. ^ "George W. Beadle | Office of the President | The University of Chicago". president.uchicago.edu. 12 June 2012. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
    6. PMID 16588492
      .
    7. ISBN 0-87969-688-5
    8. ^ Key Participants: George Beadle - It's in the Blood! A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin, and Sickle Cell Anemia
    9. PMID 4605017
      .
    10. ^
      Beadle, George Wells (1930). Genetical and Cytological Studies of Mendelian Asynapsis in Zea mays
      (PhD thesis). Cornell University.
    11. ^ Beadle, G. W. (1966) "Biochemical genetics: some recollections", pp. 23-32 in Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology, edited by J. Cairns, G. S. Stent and J. D. Watson. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology, NY. ASIN: B005F08IQ8
    12. ^ Horowitz NH (May, 1996). "The sixtieth anniversary of biochemical genetics". Genetics. 143 (1): 1-4. doi:10.1093/genetics/143.1.1.PMC 1207243. PMID 8722756
    13. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0180-112
      .
    14. ^ Beadle, George. "The Ancestry of Corn" (PDF). Retrieved 2 July 2014.
    15. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 28, 2011.
    16. ^ "G. Beadle". Nasonline.org. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
    17. ^ "APS Member History". Search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
    18. ^ Michael Wood and Colby Coombs, Alaska: A Climbing Guide, The Mountaineers Books, 2002, page 40.
    19. ISBN 9780879696887
      . Beadle's views on this occasion were somewhat more tempered than David's characterization of him as a "vehement atheist," and from his earliest days "intolerant of religion and other forms of superstition."

    External links

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