T/44  Current Biology. Intro to reprint of B&T 1941

   Title: Genetic control of biochemical reactions in Neurospa.
   Author: G. W. Beadle and E. L. Tatum
   Journal: proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
   Year: 1941          Vol: 27          Page No.: 499-506

The publication of this article in November, 1941, coincided with my
first term as an undergraduate student in the Department of Zoology at
Columbia University.  Gordon Whaley discussed it in his course on plant
morphogenesis in the spring of 1942.  However, it was Francis Ryan's
return in September 1942, from a year's postdoc with Tatum at Stanford,
that brought the full meaning of that article home to the Columbia
scientists and students, including myself.

Until then, genetics had no part in my vision of the analysis of cell
physiology which was my scientific ambition.  Mendelian ratios were a
kind of numerology that seemed very remote from the structure and
function of enzymes and cell membranes.  But now, Beadle and Tatum had
shown an experimental pathway to the correlation of hereditary
information packaged in the chromosomes to the control of all the
metabolic and morphogenetic networks in the cell -- the paradigm of
mutational dissection of pathways that informs so much of biological
research to this day.

I at once beseeched Ryan to teach me the lore of Neurospora and allow
me to assist in his laboratory.  That mentorship led me into the
genetics of microorganisms more broadly, and by 1945 into the design of
experiments to seek evidence of genetic recombination in E. coli.
{Cf.  Lederberg, J.  Genetic Recombination in Bacteria: A Discovery
Account.  Ann. Rev. Genet. 21:23-46  (1987)}


Joshua Lederberg