Cancer, Viruses, and Mass Migration: Paul Berg’s Venture into Eukaryotic Biology and the Advent of Recombinant DNA Research and Technology, 1967–1980

Abstract

The existing literature on the development of recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering tends to focus on Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer's recombinant DNA cloning technology and its commercialization starting in the mid-1970s. Historians of science, however, have pointedly noted that experimental procedures for making recombinant DNA molecules were initially developed by Stanford biochemist Paul Berg and his colleagues, Peter Lobban and A. Dale Kaiser in the early 1970s. This paper, recognizing the uneasy disjuncture between scientific authorship and legal invention in the history of recombinant DNA technology, investigates the development of recombinant DNA technology in its full scientific context. I do so by focusing on Stanford biochemist Berg's research on the genetic regulation of higher organisms. As I hope to demonstrate, Berg's new venture reflected a mass migration of biomedical researchers as they shifted from studying prokaryotic organisms like bacteria to studying eukaryotic organisms like mammalian and human cells. It was out of this boundary crossing from prokaryotic to eukaryotic systems through virus model systems that recombinant DNA technology and other significant new research techniques and agendas emerged. Indeed, in their attempt to reconstitute 'life' as a research technology, Stanford biochemists' recombinant DNA research recast genes as a sequence that could be rewritten thorough biochemical operations. The last part of this paper shifts focus from recombinant DNA technology's academic origins to its transformation into a genetic engineering technology by examining the wide range of experimental hybridizations which occurred as techniques and knowledge circulated between Stanford biochemists and the Bay Area's experimentalists. Situating their interchange in a dense research network based at Stanford's biochemistry department, this paper helps to revise the canonized history of genetic engineering's origins that emerged during the patenting of Cohen-Boyer's recombinant DNA cloning procedures.

Asilomar moments: formative framings in recombinant DNA and solar climate engineering research

“…The research community, however, was not monolithic or static. In March 1973, following multiple, overlapping advancements in the field [15,17], Stanley Cohen, Herbert Boyer and their colleagues succeeded in transplanting rDNA into E. coli bacteria [18]. This seminal event would provide physical proof of the field's theoretical principles-as well as a suddenly more tangible array of technical, social and ethical issues.…”

“…Firstly, the method for which the patent was sought had been a patchwork procedure, derived from the efforts of many scientists whose names were not listed on the patent application-including Berg. More significantly, the patenting of an rDNA method at this stage signalled a new trend towards potentially divisive intellectual property battles along with the privatization of knowledge and its potential use for commercial endeavours [15,17,23,24]. Finally, the patent was singularly illtimed, coming just ahead of a seminal conference to explore and address biohazardous risk in rDNA research, to be held in February 1975 at Asilomar.…”

The proactive historian: Methodological opportunities presented by the new archives documenting genomics

“…This led to the identification of an increasing amount of unpublished material, most of which was subsequently acquired by libraries and made accessible in the form of catalogued archives. Historical research on contemporary biomedicine has continued, addressing not only the classical stages of molecular biology -the 1950s and '60s -but also the more recent development of recombinant DNA methods, as well as the mapping and sequencing of genes (Rheinberger and Gaudillière 2004;Yi 2008;García-Sancho 2012a;Pierrel 2012;Brandt 2013;Stevens 2013;Hogan 2014;Onaga 2014). This has resulted in newly discovered archival collections being made available to scholars.…”

William McElroy, the McCollum–Pratt Institute, and the Transformation of Biology at Johns Hopkins, 1945–1960

“…See Creager, 1996;de Chadarevian, 1996;Rheinberger, 1996;andGaudillie`re, 1996. 8 Keller, 1996;Podolsky and Tauber, 1997;Morange, 1997;de Chadarevian, 2000;and Yi, 2008. Institute grew, the Biology Department began to evolve toward a more biochemical orientation. The synergistic ties between the Institute and the Department enabled the two groups to develop in tandem through the 1950s, avoiding any serious conflict in their vision of biology.…”