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Jan 16 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I have done a couple of Twitter threads on interesting researchers worth knowing about. I have compiled them here in this thread and will add more in the future. #SciCom Have a look! 🙂🧵👇
1) Douglas Prasher, the man who cloned the original GFP gene.
2) Albert Coons, the man who developed immunofluorescence microscopy in the throes of World War II.
3) The dramatic story of three Russian agronomists: Ivan Michurin, Nikolai Vavilov & Trofim Lysenko.
4) Mikhail Khristoforovich Chailakhyan, the man who proposed that a mobile, leaf-produced flowering signal exists in the midst of Lysenkoism.
5) Emmy Stein, the woman who developed radiation-induced mutagenesis, but somehow doesn't seem to get credit for it.
6) Daisy Roulland-Dussoix, the woman who first described the action of restriction enzymes.

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More from @somssichm

Marc Somssich Profile picture
Jan 20
Do you know Daisy Roulland-Dussoix? She is one of the discoverers of restriction enzymes, who’s findings paved the way for the development of recombinant DNA and cloning technologies. Accordingly, the finding was rewarded with a #NobelPrize. But the prize didn’t go to her... 🧵👇 A portrait of Daisy Roullan...
Daisy Roulland-Dussoix worked with Werner Arber to study the mechanism for the observed host-specificity of λ Phages. It was known from an important 1953 paper (Bertani & Weigle) that phages, that had replicated in a certain E. coli strain, could only re-infect the same strain. Title page of the 1953 pape...
Roulland-Dussoix & Arber showed that host-specificity is linked with the phage’s DNA. Using phages carrying radiolabeled DNA, they showed that progeny with 2 parental DNA strands retained specificity, while progeny with newly synthesized daughter strands could adapt to new hosts. Title page of the first pap...Excerpt from the paper stat...
Read 11 tweets
Marc Somssich Profile picture
Dec 2, 2021
#PlantScienceClassics #11: The GUS reporter system. In 1987 Richard Jefferson & colleagues from @michaelbevan565's lab published the first reporter system to monitor promoter activity in planta in the @embojournal: doi.org/10.1002/j.1460… Title page of the paper showing its title “GUS fusions: be
In the 1980s it was possible to express transgenes in cells of different organisms, but visualizing & assaying gene expression was still problematic. The lacZ β-galactosidase was a commonly used reporter, but compromised due to endogenous enzymes breaking down its substrates too.
So Jefferson developed the Escherichia coli uidA-encoded β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter during his PhD in David Hirsh’s lab @CUBoulder. Adding a GUS-substrate to Caenorhabditis elegans carrying the GUS-reporter led to a colorful precipitate in all tissues with GUS expression. A wild type Caenorhabditis elegans worm and one carrying the
Read 13 tweets
Marc Somssich Profile picture
Oct 18, 2021
#PlantScienceClassics #7: The ZigZag Model.15 years ago @jonathandgjones & Jeff Dangl published their @nature review integrating Pattern/PAMP-Triggered Immunity (PTI) & Effector-Triggered Immunity (ETI) into one unified model of ‘The plant immune system’. doi.org/10.1038/nature… A picture showing Jeff Dangl and Jonathan Jones together, in
In the 1980s, with plant molecular biology still in its infancy, the plant immune system was not understood very well at all. Dangl, at the time an immunologist working on mouse/human cells, remembers: ‘I had never considered that plants could recognize pathogens’.
But this fact, that the molecular mechanisms of the plant immune system were still basically a ‘black box’, is exactly what got Dangl interested and motivated to switch fields, and join the group of Klaus Hahlbrock at the @mpipz_cologne to work on plant immunity. An excerpt from the PNAS article 'Profile of Jeffery L. Dang
Read 13 tweets
Marc Somssich Profile picture
Jun 3, 2021
Do you know who Douglas Prasher is? He is the person who cloned the original GFP gene in the early 1990s. In my short history of plant light microscopy I also cover a bit of his story - & why he is relatively unknown today, despite the importance of his work. See here: 1/14 🧵 A profile picture of Douglas Prasher from Martin Chalfie's N
2/14 In 1962 Osamu Shimomura et al. identified the bioluminescent Aequorin in the Aequorea jellyfish, as well as a green fluorescent protein, that seemed to act as a FRET-acceptor for the Aequorin 'in jelly' [1][2][3] (REFs at the end). Aequorea victoria jellyfish
3/14 20 years later, Milton Cormier aimed at cloning the Aequorin gene to use it as a bioluminescent marker for use in diagnostics. He hired Douglas Prasher for this job. [4] In 1985, Prasher et al. published the successful cloning, expression and in vitro function Aequorin. [5] Aequorin protein expressed in vitro
Read 16 tweets

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