Frederick Sanger's Achievements in Science - Essay Example

Frederick Sanger Frederick Sanger was born, the second of three children, on 13 August 1918 into a Quaker family in Gloucestershire (James, 1993). He is a British biochemist who has twice been the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, a so far unique achievement in chemistry, although other people have also received two Nobel prizes, but these were in other fields of work. He describes how, at an early age he “developed a respect for the importance of science and the scientific method.” (Sanger, 2005). Originally he had planned to follow his father’s profession of medicine ( Wellcome Trust, 2013), and once at Saint John’s Cambridge he began his studies in chemistry and physics, but he soon began to specialise in biochemistry, a relatively new branch of science, and was allowed to continue his important research during the years of the Second World War. As a Quaker he did not want to fight and was originally sent to be a medical orderly, but soon returned to research in Cambridge . The work there was considered to be ‘war work’ as they were looking at nitrogen to be found in potatoes. London was a dangerous place to be and biochemist Albert C. Chibnall and his research group, who had been looking into proteins, moved north east from Imperial College in west London, to what was considered to be a safer environment of Cambridge’s the biochemistry department in East Anglia. At that time there were two main ideas among researchers into protein. One group thought that proteins were so complex that they would not easily lend themselves to being analysed chemically. Chibnall however was in the other group, whose idea was that any given protein was a quite a distinct compound of various chemicals. Chibnall was especially interested in insulin when Sanger returned to Cambridge and joined the group. It was with Chibnall’s backing, and at his suggestion, that Sanger began the process of identifying and quantifying the insulin free-amino groups. The Noble first prize was awarded as long ago as 1958 for his work on protein structures, especially of insulin. This is a peptide hormone which is produced in the pancreas by beta cells, and is very important as it is the means of regulating the metabolism of carbohydrate and fat in the human body. Without adequate supplies of insulin the body cannot allow glucose to enter its cells and the person will die quite quickly. According to Down and Kinnard ( 2012) within the United Kingdom at present there may be 3.7 million people with diabetes, that is those who have problems with their body’s production of insulin naturally. . The second prize, was a half one, was given in 1980, this time shared with molecular biochemist Walter Gilbert, who worked independently on a similar project. The citation said the award of the Noble prize was for their joint work "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids". The other half of the prize went to biochemist Paul Berg. The prize was only a step on the way. Sanger and his research group were later to sequence about 16,000 nucleotides of the DNA in human mitochondria. This is concerned with the parts of a cell responsible for transforming chemical energy obtained from food consumed into a type of energy that the cell can make use of. This task finally completed the group moved on to new work which involved sequencing the 172,000-plus nucleotides found in the Epstein-Barr virus, a common human virus. Few people would have either the drive, the skills or the patience required for this type of very precise and repetitive work, but that which is necessary to add to human knowledge, especially when investigating human physiology and its many intricacies. In some people this virus is passed on at birth and in most cases causes no symptoms, but in others it can do so when they become infected for the first time during their teenage years, it causes infectious mononucleosis up to half the time. This infection involves having swollen glands, fever and a sore throat and generally feeling quite ill for a number of week or even months on end.. In some cases the spleen becomes distended and the heart can be adversely affected, so this is an important virus( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , 2006) . The Nobel prizes are not the only awards Sanger has received. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954, and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1963. He would later become a Companion of Honour. Scientific honours were awarded on many occasions. Born the son of a general practitioner, he would later attend St John’s College, part Cambridge University, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences in 1939 ( The Noble Prize Organisation , 2013). He would stay at the university for an extra year in order to study biochemistry ( Britannica ,Undated) Of his arrival at the college he said “It seemed to me that here was a way to really understand living matter and to develop a more scientific basis to many medical problems.” ( Sanger, 2005). From 1943 to 1958 onwards his work had concentrated on problems related to the structure of proteins. He obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry for his work on the metabolism of lysine an amino acid and the nitrogen found in potatoes, after working with Albert Neuberger in 1943. Later in the same decade he was able to discover a way to sever the molecular bridges which join chains of amino acids. This process then allowed him to study single chains of these proteins and then he could move on to ever smaller pieces and finally to separate and categorise individual amino acids one by one. Such experimental studies would eventually enable him to determine of the structure of insulin, after a ten year long study which resulted finally in revealing its full complement of 51 amino acids ( Crystal, 1995, page 832).This work was done using insulin obtained from cattle , but could be related to human physiology. This in turn would have enable the treatment of diabetes using man-made insulin such as Insulin Aspartproamine, and other similar products developed by various drug companies, enabling so many people to deal with their diabetes day by day (Ask Health, 2012), whereas up until this time they had relied on animals insulin. Sanger then went on look at new methods to find the molecular structures of nucleic acids ( Crystal, 1995, page 832). In 1962 he made a move to the new UK Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, ( Wellcome Trust 2013) where he would be surrounded by geneticists, who had interests in DNA and genes. Sanger quickly became interested in the challenge of determining the precise order of DNA bases, a process usually referred to as known as DNA sequencing. At the time , although it had been realised that DNA was a type of linear code, there were then still no means of reading this code, even when it was gradually unravelled. Sanger and his colleagues were able to develop a cleave-and-sequence method for the study of small ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules. They soon realised however that they would require some other method in order to enable them to properly sequence DNA molecules, which were considerably larger in comparative terms than ribonucleic acid molecules. In order to sequence DNA it was decided that a copying procedure would be investigated and this eventually proved to be a successful method. His colleagues over the years were also eminent in their fields. He worked with James Watson, an American, and Francis Crick, themselves Nobel prize winners in 1962 for Physiology for their work on DNA. In 1993 the Wellcome Foundation named its centre for research into genetics after Sanger (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, 2013) and the man himself declared it open. Despite the many accolades which have been bestowed upon him during an amazingly productive career, Sanger is described as ‘A modest man’ ( Stretton 2002, page 537). Stretton describes how this great scientist described a retrospective of his life’s work simply as ’Sequences, sequences, and sequences’ ( Sanger 1988). Now in 2013, fifty years on from the original discoveries, and with the sequencing of the human genome largely completed , it is difficult to imagine a world without knowledge of the sequences of the various proteins and of nucleic acids. Their sequences have become a dominant fact in our modern world. We watch television and someone discovers the perpetuator of a crime, because a hair fell from his head at the scene. Just a few days ago scientists in Leicestershire were able to confirm that the body in the car park really was Richard III after checking DNA sequences with those of his modern day relative, a direct descendant of his sister (Richard III: the King in the Car Park, Channel 4, February 2013) . Sanger has not only done the research, but has published his findings in numerous scientific journal,s such as his article explaining the fractionation of oxidized insulin (Sanger 1949), but also right up to quite recent times. Sanger officially retired in 1983, aged 65 after forty years working for the Medical Research Council. Even as late as 1996 he was still publishing papers( Sanger 1996) and is said to still take time away from his home and garden to call in from time to time at the research institute which now bears his name, just to check things are going as they should. His working life may be over, but Sanger and his colleagues laid the foundations for more recent research, much of it involving techniques and technology only recently available, and more or less unrecognisable to those early pioneers, as described by Lubin and Gargis in 2012. The authors show how Sanger was able to look at targeted gene variant analysis, but that research has now moved on to include increasing degrees of complexity , going through multi-gene panels, whole exome to the whole genome. References Ask Health , 2012, Insulin Aspart (Recombinant), Insulin Aspart Protamine (Recombinant) Suspension for injection, viewed 15th February 2013 http://ask.healthline.com/goldcontent/insulin-aspart-insulin-aspart-protamine#H3?o=3986&qsrc=999 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006, viewed 15th February 2013 http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/ebv.htm Channel 4, 4th February 2013, Richard III: The King in the Car Park. Crystal, D., 1995, The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Down, S., Kinnard, F., 2012, ‘Injection Technique in Insulin Therapy’, Nursing Practice, Nursing Times, viewed 15th February 2013, www.nursingtimes.net/.../03/01/x/z/k/120306-PrEd-insulin.pdf Encyclopedia Britannica, undated , Frederick Sanger, viewed 15th February 2013http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/522340/Frederick-Sanger James, L., 1993, Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 1901–1992. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society; Chemical Heritage Foundation. Lubin, I. and Gargis, A, 2012, Next Generation Sequencing: Assuring Analytical Validity, EGAPP Working Group Meeting May 2012, viewed 15th February 2013, www.cdc.gov/osels/lspppo/pdf/DLSSFinalEGAPPforwebsite.pdf Sanger, F. (1949). ‘Fractionation of oxidized insulin’, The Biochemical journal 44 (1): 126–128. viewed 15th February 2013, PMC [//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274818 1274818]. PMID [//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16748471 16748471 Sanger, F. 1988, ‘Sequences, sequences and sequences’, Annual Review of Biochemistry ,57, pages 1-28,Cambridge, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Sanger, 1996, Selected Papers of Frederick Sanger, edited by Sanger and Dowling, M., World Scientific Series in 20th Century Biology: Volume 1 Sanger,F., 2005, Autobiography, viewed 15th February 2013,http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1980/sanger-autobio.html Stretton, A., October 2002, ‘ Genetics’, Volume 162, number 2, pages 537-532. The Noble Prize Org., 2013, The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1958, viewed 15th February 2013http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1958/sanger-bio.html Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, 2013, Frederick Sanger, viewed 15th February 2013, http://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/people/biographies/fsanger.html Read More