A History of Molecular Biology
A History of Molecular Biology
复制标题
分子生物学史
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
1999
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
W. Bynum
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
W. Bynum
近代科学史经常被证明是一场战场。历史学家有时会指责那些转而报道历史的科学家是天真和不加批判的，他们对自己的主题写下了“狭隘的眼光”。反过来，科学家经常对历史学家对实验室生活施加的人类学和社会学观点持怀疑态度。他们抱怨说，历史学家加入了政治和争吵，却忽略了这一切的重点--科学。我的职业生涯中有很长一段时间都在努力鼓励这两个社区之间的对话，我想邀请米歇尔·莫兰格参加未来的某个会议，因为这里有一位生物化学教授，他阅读并吸收了相关的历史文献--尽管他并不完全同意--他从内部了解科学。他成功地为他的主题写了一篇敏感而复杂的文章，让普通读者能够读懂。在这一过程中，人们学到了很多关于历史和分子生物学的知识。莫兰热的这本书很好地证明了历史分析可以提供一种有效的方法来理解当今的关切。这本流畅的译文最初于1994年以法语出版，其中四分之三以上提到了英语出版物，值得欢迎。莫兰热将他的专著分为三个部分，致力于当代关键科学的诞生、发展和扩张。分子生物学学科经历了近三十年的孕育和诞生，阐明了病毒和噬菌体的本质，建立了一基因一酶假说，研究了细菌繁殖的细微差别，并对该基因的化学性质进行了很大的争论。这一幕的主要演员包括莱纳斯·鲍林、马克斯·德尔布吕克、约书亚·莱德伯格和萨尔瓦多·卢里亚。莫兰热还对Erwin Schrödinger这本名不见经传的书《生活是什么》的内容和影响进行了清晰的评价。以及尼尔斯·玻尔的著名演讲《光与生命》。莫兰热还重新审视了洛克菲勒基金会对这一学科的影响，该学科于1938年首次被沃伦·韦弗(Warren Weaver)称为分子生物学，韦弗从1931年开始担任洛克菲勒基金会自然科学部门的负责人。1953年，詹姆斯·沃森和弗朗西斯·克里克在《自然》杂志上发表的关于DNA螺旋结构的论文预示着分子生物学的发展阶段。随之而来的是基因复制的物理模型和克里克著名的“中心教条”的阐述。对信使RNA和蛋白质合成作用的了解也可以追溯到这一时期；我仍然记得在我们的生物化学课上，雅克·莫诺德、弗朗索瓦·雅各布和安德烈·洛夫刚刚被授予1965年诺贝尔医学奖或生理学奖。这一奖项和其他诺贝尔奖催化了分子生物学在整个欧洲和北美的扩展，莫兰奇将他的故事带到了现在，这是莫兰奇的功劳。关于基因工程的章节是一个清晰的典范，它既分析了公众的恐惧，也悄悄地强调了这样一个事实，即基因工程技术是当代分子生物学研究的所有方面的基础。关于基因拼接、癌基因和DNA放大的更多章节完善了这本示范性的书。《分子生物学史》中渗透着两个主题。首先是分子生物学与遗传学、发育生物学、生物化学、免疫学、物理学和细胞生物学等相关学科之间不断变化的历史关系。作为一名生物化学家，莫兰奇对化学对他的研究对象的贡献特别敏感，但也同样意识到这样一个事实，即所有的生命科学都不能简化为分子生物学。事实上，正如他指出的那样，细胞生物学在过去20年里取得了特别丰硕的成果。他预测，分子生物学和进化生物学的结合将在未来几年成为创造性跨学科互动的来源。第二个主题是技术在创造新知识中的基础作用。虽然他对分子结构的X射线衍射分析没有我预期的那么突出(例如，Dorothy Hodgkin没有提到)，但他对电子显微镜、超速离心机、层析、放射性同位素和光谱学在经典分子生物学创造中的重要性非常敏感。他引用了一位未透露姓名的不满的诺贝尔奖获得者的话说，卡里·穆利斯在DNA扩增方面的工作只是一个技术技巧，与1993年颁发的最终科学奖不相称。然而，正如莫兰热提醒我们的那样，科学和技术现在是如此紧密地交织在一起，以至于并不总是可能说出一个在哪里结束，另一个在哪里开始。
The history of recent science has often proved a battlefield. Historians sometimes accuse scientists who turn their hands to reporting history as being naive and uncritical, writing ‘tunnel-vision’ accounts of their topics. In turn, scientists often look with suspicion on the anthropological and sociological perspectives that historians bring to bear on laboratory life. They complain that historians put in the politics and bickering but leave out the point of it all—the science. I have spent a good deal of my professional life trying to encourage dialogue between the two communities, and I would like to invite Michel Morange to some future meeting, for here is a professor of biochemistry who has read and assimilated the relevant historical literature—even though he does not agree with all of it—and knows science from the inside. He succeeds brilliantly in producing a sensitive, sophisticated account of his subject that is accessible to the general reader. Along the way, one learns a lot about history and a lot about molecular biology. Morange’s volume wonderfully demonstrates that historical analysis can provide an effective means of understanding present-day concerns. Originally published in French in 1994, this fluent translation (with more than three-quarters of its references to English language publications) is to be welcomed. Morange has divided his monograph into three parts, devoted to the birth, development and expansion of what has become the pivotal contemporary science. The discipline of molecular biology had a gestation and birth of about three decades, during which the nature of viruses and phages was elucidated, the one gene–one enzyme hypothesis was established, the nuances of bacterial reproduction were studied and the chemical nature of the gene was greatly debated. The chief players in this act of the drama— which extended until just after World War II—included Linus Pauling, Max Delbrück, Joshua Lederberg and Salvador Luria. Morange also provides lucid assessments of the contents and impact of Erwin Schrödinger’s modestly entitled little volume, What is Life? and Niels Bohr’s famous lecture, Light and Life. Morange also re-examines the influence of the Rockefeller Foundation on the discipline that was first called ‘molecular biology’ in 1938 by Warren Weaver, head of the Foundation’s Natural Science Division from 1931. The 1953 papers in Nature of James Watson and Francis Crick on the helical structure of DNA heralded the developmental phase of molecular biology. With it came a physical model of gene replication and Crick’s famous enunciation of the ‘central dogma’. Knowledge of the role of messenger RNA and of protein synthesis also dates from this period; I still remember the announcement to our biochemistry class that Jacques Monod, François Jacob and André Lwoff had just been awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. This and other Nobel Prizes catalyzed the expansion of molecular biology throughout Europe and North America, and it is to Morange’s credit that he brings his story right up to the present time. The chapter on genetic engineering is a model of clarity, both in its analysis of public fears and in its quiet emphasis on the fact that the techniques of genetic engineering are fundamental to all aspects of contemporary molecular biology research. Further chapters on gene splicing, oncogenes and DNA amplification round out this exemplary book. Two themes permeate A History of Molecular Biology. The first is the changing historical relationship of molecular biology to related disciplines such as genetics, developmental biology, biochemistry, immunology, physics and cell biology. As a biochemist, Morange is especially sensitive to chemical contributions to his subject, but equally aware of the fact that all life science cannot be reduced to molecular biology. Indeed, as he points out, cell biology has enjoyed an especially fruitful period during the past two decades. He predicts that the integration of molecular and evolutionary biology will be a source of creative interdisciplinary interaction in the coming years. A second theme is the fundamental role of technique in the creation of new knowledge. Although he gives less prominence than I would have expected to Xray diffraction analysis of molecular structure (Dorothy Hodgkin, for instance, gets no mention), he is sensitive to the importance, inter alia, of the electron microscope, the ultracentrifuge, chromatography, radioisotopes, and spectroscopy in the creation of classic molecular biology. He cites an unnamed disgruntled Nobel Laureate who remarked that Kary Mullis’s work on DNA amplification was a mere technical trick, unworthy of the ultimate scientific Prize, awarded in 1993. As Morange reminds us, however, science and technology are now so intertwined that it is not always possible to say where one ends and the other begins.