U.S. Biochemist Maxine Singer has died aged 93
Miguel Bronchud, Co-Founder and Advisory Board at Regenerative Medicine Solutions, shared on LinkedIn:
”U.S. Biochemist Maxine Singer, who led calls to regulate early gene-splicing and later defended technology in public, has died aged 93.
R.I.P. Singer who co-authored a 1973 letter to Science that raised concerns over gene splicing because it could create organisms ‘with biological activity of an unpredictable nature’. The letter eventually led to a voluntary moratorium — first in the history of science — on splicing experiments. Singer (born 1931) grew up in New York and attended Swarthmore College, just outside Philadelphia, where she initially majored in chemistry but switched to biology. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the world of science was not especially welcoming to women, whether it was in academia or in industry, but after graduating from Swarthmore in 1952 she entered Yale University, where she earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1957. This was just four years after Francis Crick and James Watson discovered in Cambridge (UK) the double-helical structure of DNA. Very few scientists in the United States were studying nucleic acids at that time. At the NIH she helped formulate the institute’s guidelines about how research in genetic engineering should be carried out. She continued to work for safe and ethical use of biotechnologies and then moved to the National Cancer Institute, where she stayed until she became president of the Carnegie Institution in 1988, a post she held through 2002. As a young scientist at the NIH in the 1960s, Singer played an important role in experiments being conducted by Heppel, Nirenberg, and others on the ‘genetic code’, trying to determine exactly how RNA transferred genetic information from DNA in the cell nucleus to the site of protein synthesis in the cell’s protoplasm.
They used RNA molecules, with specific predetermined base sequences made from adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and uracil (U)—for example, all uracil—to determine what proteins such RNAs would make from solutions of free amino acids, the chemical components of proteins. By matching each amino acid to a particular triplet of RNA bases, these scientists wrote the dictionary of three-letter words in which the genetic code is written. Singer had the job of constructing the experimental RNAs using a special enzyme to string together the required components.
These enzymes opened up the possibility of ‘Genetic Engineering’ and raised concerns over gene splicing because it could create organisms ‘with biological activity of an unpredictable nature’. Science fiction authors added spice to the subject with movies and films on the creation of monsters, epidemics, ET invasion or disease, etc. Bacteria were soon produced in the laboratory with genes from other organisms including humans. Safety measures allowed researchers to monitor their samples and genetically engineered bacteria (and other microorganisms) are currently used to produce human insulin, human growth hormone, a protein used in blood clotting, other pharmaceuticals, or plants.”
Source: Miguel Bronchud/LinkedIn