Daniel Nathans
(1928 - 1999)
Daniel Nathans was born on October 30, 1928, in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1950,
Nathans received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University
of Delaware, and then a M.D. in 1954, from Washington
University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Following graduation, he took an internship at Columbia-Presbyterian
Medical Center in New York. He then moved to Maryland,
where he worked as a Clinical Associate at the National
Institute of Health. From 1957 to 1959, Nathans returned
to the Medical Center in New York to became a Resident
in Medicine.
Nathans was a guest investigator (1959-1962), at Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research in Fritz Lipmann’s
(Nobel Prize recipient in 1953) laboratory. In 1962,
he accepted a position at Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine in the Department of Microbiology. In 1972,
he was elected the Boury Professor and Director of the
Department of Microbiology. Nathans remained at John
Hopkins until retirement, only leaving for a year in
1969, to be the American Cancer Society Scholar at the Weizmann
Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
In 1978, Nathans was awared the Nobel Prize in Medicine,
along with Werner Arber and Hamilton Smith, for the
discovery of "restriction enzymes and their application
to problems of molecular genetics". In addition
to receiving the Nobel Prize, Nathans was awarded National
Academy of Sciences’ U.S. Steel Foundation Award
in Molecular Biology in 1976. In 1977, he was also selected
as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Nathans died on November 16, 1999.
The following press release from the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences describes Nathans' work:
“Restriction enzymes provide the "chemical
knives" to cut genes (= DNA) into
defined fragments. These may then be used
(1) to determine the order of genes on
chromosomes, (2) to analyse the chemical
structure of genes and of regions of DNA
which regulate the function of genes, and
(3) to create new combinations of genes.
These techniques open up new avenues to
study the organisation and expression of
genes of higher animals and to solve basic
problems in developmental biology. In medicine,
increased knowledge in this area should
help in the prevention and treatment of
malformations, hereditary diseases and
cancer.
Dan Nathans pioneered
the application of restriction enzymes
to problems of genetics. He works in Baltimore
at the same university as Smith. All his
contributions in this area of research
were made during the 1970's. Nathans uses
in his experiments the small DNA from a
simian virus, called SV40, but his results
are of general significance. In his first
communication from 1971 he showed that
the restriction enzyme discovered by Smith
cleaves SV40 DNA into 11 well defined fragments.
In this communication Nathans also discussed
other possible applications of restriction
enzymes in genetics and in a brilliant
way predicted much of the later development.
Nathan's publication from 1971 no doubt
served as a major source of inspiration
for scientists who subsequently started
to use restriction enzymes. Two years later
he described the cleavage patterns of SV40
DNA obtained with two additional restriction
enzymes. He could then piece together the
fragments obtained from the three cleavages
and construct the complete genetic map
of SV40 DNA, the first obtained by a chemical
method. The general approach designed by
Nathans for SV40 was later used by other
scientists for mapping increasingly complex
DNA structures. The map of SV40 DNA was
further refined by other scientists. Today
we know the complete nucleotide sequence
of the molecule and thus can write the
complete chemical formula for all the genes
of an animal virus. Nathans himself continuously
contributed new ideas and developed new
methods for the application of restriction
enzymes to genetic problems and has continuously
been a main source of inspiration in this
field of research.”
Sources: Nobelprize.org,
Nobel
Prize Autobiography |