William Astbury
William Astbury Longton, England | |
---|---|
Died | 4 June 1961 Leeds, England | (aged 63)
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Known for | Beta sheet Fiber diffraction X-ray diffraction of DNA |
Awards | Actonian Prize (1935) Croonian Medal (1945) Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics, Molecular biology |
Institutions | University College London Royal Institution University of Leeds |
Doctoral advisor | William Henry Bragg[2] |
William Thomas Astbury FRS (25 February 1898 – 4 June 1961) was an English physicist and molecular biologist who made pioneering X-ray diffraction studies of biological molecules.[2] His work on keratin provided the foundation for Linus Pauling's discovery of the alpha helix. He also studied the structure for DNA in 1937 and made the first step in the elucidation of its structure.
Early life
Astbury was the fourth child of seven, born in
Astbury might well have become a potter but, luckily, won a scholarship to Longton High School, where his interests were shaped by the Headmaster and second master, both chemists. After becoming head boy and winning the Duke of Sutherland's gold medal, Astbury won the only local scholarship available and went up to Jesus College, Cambridge.[citation needed]
After two terms at Cambridge, his studies were interrupted by service during the
Academic career
After graduating from Cambridge, Astbury worked with William Bragg, first at University College London and then, in 1923, at the Davy-Faraday Laboratory at the Royal Institution in London. Fellow students included many eminent scientists, including Kathleen Lonsdale and J. D. Bernal and others. Astbury showed great enthusiasm for his studies and published papers in the journal Classic Crystallography, such as on the structure of tartaric acid.
In 1928, Astbury was appointed Lecturer in Textile Physics at the University of Leeds. He remained at Leeds for the remainder of his career, being appointed Reader in Textile Physics in 1937 and Professor of Biomolecular Structure in 1946. He held the chair until his death in 1961. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1940.[3] He is commemorated by the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at Leeds.[4]
In later life he was given many awards and honorary degrees.
X-ray diffraction studies of fibrous proteins
At
In 1931, Astbury was also the first to propose that mainchain-mainchain
Astbury's work moved on to include X-ray studies of many proteins (including myosin, epidermin[5] and fibrin) and he was able to deduce from their diffraction patterns that the molecules of these substances were coiled and folded. This work led him to the conviction that the best way to understand the complexity of living systems was through studying the shape of the giant macromolecules from which they are made – an approach which he popularised with passion as 'molecular biology'. His other great passion was classical music and once said that protein fibres such as keratin in wool were 'the chosen instruments on which nature has played so many incomparable themes, and countless variations and harmonies'[6] These two passions converged when in 1960 he presented an X-ray image taken by his research assistant Elwyn Beighton of a fibre of keratin protein in a lock of hair that was said to have come from Mozart – who was one of Astbury's favourite composers.[7]
But proteins were not the only biological fibre that Astbury studied. In 1937
Astbury and Bell reported that DNA's structure repeated every 2.7 nanometres and that the bases lay flat, stacked, 0.34 nanometres apart.[10] At a symposium in 1938 at Cold Spring Harbor,[11] Astbury pointed out that the 0.34 nanometre spacing was the same as amino acids in polypeptide chains. (The currently accepted value for the spacing of the bases in B-form of DNA is 0.332 nm.)
In 1946 Astbury presented a paper at a symposium in
Astbury and Bell's work was significant for two reasons. Firstly they showed that X-ray crystallography could be used to reveal the regular, ordered structure of DNA – an insight which laid the foundations for the later work of
Astbury described Avery's work as 'one of the most remarkable discoveries of our time'[13] and it inspired him with the vision that, in the aftermath of World War 2, he would established a new department at Leeds that would become a national centre to blaze the trail for the new science of molecular biology. Writing to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds in 1945 he declared that 'all biology, is now passing over into the molecular structural phase...In all branches of biology and all universities this thing must come to pass and I suggest that Leeds should be bold and help to lead the way.'[14]
Sadly, not everyone shared his dream. The University Senate allowed him to establish a new department but would not allow him to use the phrase 'molecular biology' in the title due to opposition from senior biologists who felt that, as a physicist, Astbury was encroaching without invitation on intellectual territory that they rightfully considered to be their own. The Senate also granted him premises but these were a far cry from what he had hoped for. His new department was housed in a Victorian terraced house that required substantial conversion, with uneven floors that made delicate scientific equipment wobble, a faulty electrical supply and unreliable plumbing that sometimes led to flooding. To add to his woes, the Medical Research Council rejected his application for funding.
Despite these set-backs, two important developments took place in Astbury's new department. The first was the elucidation of the mechanism by which thrombin acts as a protease to catalyse the formation of the major component of blood clots, the insoluble protein fibrin, from its soluble precursor fibrinogen by Laszlo Lorand, a young PhD student who had fled his native Hungary to join Astbury. Lorand's work was a major discovery in our understanding of the process by which blood clots form.
The second development was a series of new X-ray photographs of B-form DNA taken in 1951 by Astbury's research assistant Elwyn Beighton which the historian of science, Professor Robert Olby has since said was 'clearly the famous B-pattern found by Rosalind Franklin and R. Gosling'. Olby was referring to an X-ray image of B-form DNA that was taken a year later by Rosalind Franklin and her PhD student Raymond Gosling at King's College a year later which came to be known as 'Photo 51' Despite its modest name this image was to play an important role in the story of DNA and a plaque on the wall outside King's College, London hails it as 'one of the most important photographs in the world'. This is because the image shows a striking cross-shaped pattern of black spots made by X-rays as they are scattered by the DNA fibre and when James Watson was first shown Franklin and Gosling's picture, this cross-shaped pattern made him so excited that he said 'my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race',[15] because he knew that only a molecule coiled into a helical shape could scatter X-rays to give this particular pattern.
Franklin and Gosling's 'Photo 51' provided one of several important clues to Watson and Crick -but Astbury's response to Beighton's very similar X-ray images of DNA could not have been more different. He never published them in a journal or presented them at a scientific meeting. Given that Astbury was such a renowned expert in X-ray studies of biological molecules this apparent neglect of such an important clue may seem surprising. One explanation is that, although Astbury recognised the importance of DNA, he did not understand that biological information was carried in the one-dimensional sequence of bases within the molecule but rather, that it resided in subtle and elaborate variations in its three-dimensional structure. Far from making his jaw drop and his pulse race, the revelation that DNA was a simple a twisting helix would therefore have been a disappointment but it is intriguing to speculate on how differently history might have unfolded had Astbury shown Beighton's image to his friend and colleague the eminent US chemist and Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling when he visited Astbury at his home in Headingley, Leeds in 1952. Pauling was, at that time, Watson and Crick's greatest rival in trying to solve the structure of DNA and was desperate to obtain a good quality X-ray diffraction image of DNA. In 1952, he had already proposed an incorrect model of DNA based on Astbury and Bell's early work but had Astbury shown Pauling these new images taken by Beighton, it might well have been Caltech, Pasadena and not Cambridge, UK that is today remembered for the discovery of the double-helix. Despite this missed opportunity, Astbury, together with Florence Bell, had made a major contribution by showing that the methods of X-ray crystallography could be used to reveal the regular, ordered structure of DNA.
But perhaps Astbury's greatest scientific legacy was his rather unusual overcoat. In the late 1930s Astbury and his collaborators A.C. Chibnall and Kennet Bailey showed that by chemical treatment, the molecular chains of soluble seed proteins could be refolded to make them into insoluble fibres. The company ICI was so interested in this idea that they built a pilot production plant in Scotland to a new textile fibre called 'Ardil' that was produced by deliberately altering the molecular structure of the main soluble protein component of monkeynuts to refold it into an insoluble fibre in the hope of using this as a cheap and abundant substitute for wool as a raw material in the textile industry. To demonstrate the feasibility of this idea, ICI made an entire overcoat from Ardil which Astbury regularly sported to lectures and in the end, although Ardil did not prove to be the salvation of the British textile industry, it did serve as a powerful illustration of Astbury's conviction that not only could we solve the structure of giant biomolecules such as proteins and DNA using X-rays, but that we might also then deliberately manipulate these structures for our own practical purposes.
This was an idea which truly came of age in the mid- to late 1970s with the rise of recombinant DNA technology by which time Astbury was dead but as his friend and colleague, J.D.Bernal wrote in an obituary to him, 'His monument will be found in the whole of molecular biology'.[16]
Personal qualities and history
Astbury was known for his unfailing
Astbury was an excellent writer and lecturer; his works are characterized by remarkable clarity and an easy-going, natural manner. He also enjoyed music, playing both piano and violin.
Astbury met Frances Gould when he was stationed in Cork, Ireland with the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I. They married in 1922 and had a son, Bill, and a daughter, Maureen.
See also
References
- .
- ^ a b c G Ferry (2014) Of DNA and broken dreams, Nature 510(7503), 32–33.
- ^ University of Leeds, Biography
- ^ "University of Leeds, History of the Astbury Centre".
- ^ "Epidermin". Retrieved 22 April 2021.
- ^ Astbury, W.T. (1955). "Textile Fibres and Molecular Biology". Lecture Delivered at the International Textile Congress, Brussels, June 1955.
- ^ Astbury, W.T. (1960). "The fundamentals of fibre research: a physicist's story". Journal of the Textile Industry. 51: 515–525.
- ^ Wainwright, Martin (23 November 2010). "Sidelined scientist who came close to discovering DNA is celebrated at last". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
- S2CID 4064777.
- ^ "Florence Bell: The Other 'Dark Lady of DNA'? – The British Society for the History of Science (BSHS)". www.bshs.org.uk. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
- )
- PMID 19871359.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Letter from W.T. Astbury to F.B. Hanson, 19 October 1944. Astbury Papers MS419 Box E.152, University of Leeds Special Collections, Brotherton Library.
- ^ Letter from W.T. Astbury to Vice-Chancellor, University of Leeds, 6 February 1945. Astbury Papers MS419 Box B.18, University of Leeds Special Collections, Brotherton Library
- ^ Watson, J.D. (1968). The Double Helix. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 167.
- .
- ^ Bailey K. (1961) "William Thomas Astbury (1898–1961): A Personal Tribute", Adv. Protein Chem., 17, x–xiv
- Astbury WT and Woods HJ. (1931) "The Molecular Weights of Proteins", Nature, 127, 663–665.
- Astbury WT and Street A. (1931) "X-ray studies of the structures of hair, wool and related fibres. I. General", Trans. R. Soc. Lond., A230, 75–101.
- Astbury WT. (1933) "Some Problems in the X-ray Analysis of the Structure of Animal Hairs and Other Protein Fibers", Trans. Faraday Soc., 29, 193–211.
- Astbury WT and Woods HJ. (1934) "X-ray studies of the structures of hair, wool and related fibres. II. The molecular structure and elastic properties of hair keratin", Trans. R. Soc. Lond., A232, 333–394.
- Astbury WT and Sisson WA. (1935) "X-ray studies of the structures of hair, wool and related fibres. III. The configuration of the keratin molecule and its orientation in the biological cell", Proc. R. Soc. Lond., A150, 533–551.
- Neurath H. (1940) "Intramolecular folding of polypeptide chains in relation to protein structure", J. Phys. Chem., 44, 296–305.
- Taylor HS. (1942) "Large molecules through atomic spectacles", Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., 85, 1–12.
- Huggins M. (1943) "The structure of fibrous proteins", Chem. Rev., 32, 195–218.
Further reading
- Olby, Robert (1970). "Astbury, William Thomas". ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.
- Hall, Kersten T (2014). The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-870459-1.
External links
- Astbury Centre for Structural Biology
- Key Participants: William T. Astbury – Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History
- ‘What is the Double Helical Structure of DNA and Who Was William Astbury ?’
- ‘Did William Astbury Take ‘Photo 51' Before Rosalind Franklin?’
- 'The Astbury X-ray Camera' – a public lecture, 24 January 2017, University of Leeds
- 'Florence Bell – the other Dark Lady of DNA'
- 'William Astbury -Forgotten Hero of DNA's Discovery' – 'The Guardian' 17th Sept 2015
- 'The X-ray Visionary Who Faded From View' – Oxford Today, 13 March 2015
- 'Watson and Crick Took All the Glory But There's a Forgotten Hero of the Double Helix' 3 July 2014