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Young George Beadle, around 1908.
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George Beadle at work in his lab at Stanford.
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Neurospora mutants laid out to show the experimental design.
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1936 diary entry of Frank Blair Hanson, then President of the Rockefeller Foundation. He noted that Beadle is a "man to watch." Also, note the salary for graduate students.
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The Rockefeller Foundation funded Beadle's experiments. This 1943 letter is a progress report Beadle wrote to the Rockefeller President.
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Beadle and assistant in the Neurospora storeroom at Stanford, 1949.
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Telegram sent to Edward Tatum telling him that he, George Beadle and Joshua Lederberg will share the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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George Beadle at the Nobel Awards ceremonies.
Audio Glossary
Amino acids, Enzyme, Gene, Gene expression, ProteinVideo Interviews
Joshua Lederberg is a Professor Emeritus at the Rockefeller University. He was a graduate student of Ed Tatum.
Clip 1 (0:49)
Describing Ed Tatum as a scientist, advisor, and friend.
George Beadle had successful research careers in corn and Drosophila genetics, before starting the field of Neurospora research. George Beadle and Edward Tatum used Neurospora to prove that "one gene makes one protein." Tatum also had a role in starting bacterial genetics. GEORGE WELLS BEADLE (1903-1989)
George Beadle, "Beets" to his friends, was born in Wahoo, Nebraska. His father was a farmer and had a 40-acre farm just outside Wahoo. Beadle's mother died when he was four, and Beadle, his brother, and his sister were raised by his father and housekeepers. Beadle's father thought he might become a farmer. However, Beadle's high school science teacher encouraged him to go to college. Beadle graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture with a science degree in 1926, and stayed an extra year to finish a master's degree. While working on his master's degree on the ecology of grasses, Beadle became interested in genetics. He applied to graduate school at Cornell University and, in 1927, joined R. A. Emerson's group to work on corn genetics. Emerson's group included Barbara McClintock who later helped Beadle figure out the chromosome number of Neurospora. After he finished his Ph.D. in 1931, Beadle did post doctoral work in T. H. Morgan's newly established biology division at Caltech and then in Paris with Boris Ephrussi. Beadle worked with the "hot" genetics model of the day, Drosophila melanogaster. He published papers on crossing over and developed the technique of imaginal disc transplantation. Beadle, with Ephrussi, also published a 1937 paper on the interaction of genes in determining Drosophila eye color. Hints of the "one gene-one enzyme" hypothesis were in this paper. Beadle and Ephrussi alluded to genes making substances necessary for pigmentation and to mutations in the genes disrupting this process. In 1937, Beadle teamed up with Edward Tatum at Stanford University to isolate and identify the eye color "substances." They were beaten by another group; however, this just convinced Beadle that they needed a simpler genetic system to study the question of gene action. He found it in Neurospora, and in 1940, Beadle converted his Drosophila lab into one set up to grow and culture Neurospora. Beadle's plan to mutate Neurospora and test for nutritional deficiencies was sound; however, there was no guarantee of success. Beadle and Tatum agreed ahead of time only to test 5,000 cultures before giving up on the idea. They collected and stored over 1,000 irradiated cultures before they actually tested any of them. Success came with the 299th culture. Beadle and Tatum published their results in 1941 and shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Beadle was a popular and much admired boss. Enthusiastic, practical and funny, no job was too big or too small. He directed as well as did the experiments; he also took care of the lab by doing many of the small repairs and making some of the necessary equipment. In 1945, Beadle accepted the Chair of the Division of Biology at Caltech, replacing T. H. Morgan who had died. From 1961 to 1968, Beadle served as the President of the University of Chicago, and was able to bolster and strengthen the university's image. After retirement in 1969, Beadle took up research again to try and determine the origin of maize. In 1981, Beadle developed Alzheimer disease. He died in 1989, bringing a distinguished career to an end. EDWARD LAWRIE TATUM (1909-1975)
Edward Tatum was born in Boulder, Colorado. While Tatum was growing up, his family moved a number of times. His father had different teaching positions at various universities and colleges in the Midwest. Tatum grew up in a science-oriented household as his father had a Ph.D and an M.D. Tatum obtained a Bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1931, and he stayed to do graduate work on nutritional requirements of different bacterial strains. This research had a practical aspect. The bacterial strains Tatum worked on were found in milk. By knowing what bacteria needed for growth, strategies could have been developed to control their growth. After his Ph.D., Tatum spent a year at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, doing the same type of research. In 1937, his professors at Wisconsin forwarded him a job ad. George Beadle was looking for a research associate for his new lab at Stanford University. The job was an excellent research opportunity; however, Tatum's professors advised him to go into the dairy industry and do butter research - the money was better. Tatum chose intellectual challenge over money. He spent the first few years in Beadle's lab isolating and identifying the "substances" involved in Drosophila eye color determination - an extension of Beadle's earlier work. They were beaten by another group, but this set into motion the events leading up to the Neurospora experiments. The switch to Neurospora supposedly came about after one of the biology classes Tatum volunteered to teach. Beadle was sitting in on the lecture and was reminded of the Neurospora system; he thought it would be the perfect system to use to study gene action. The new Neurospora project had no guarantee of success. So, Beadle and Tatum had a deal; they would test only 5,000 Neurospora cultures. If they couldn't find one nutritional mutant in 5,000, they would abandon the project. The experiment was a success and Edward Tatum shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 1945, Tatum had a short stint at Washington University in St. Louis, and then moved to Yale. He was using the Neurospora strategy to find genetic mutants in bacteria. He used Escherichia coli strain K12 from the Stanford collections. At the time, K12 was not the most common E. coli strain in use, but this proved to be a fortuitous choice. K12 had the properties that allowed Tatum and his student Joshua Lederberg to demonstrate bacterial recombination. Lederberg shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 1948, Tatum returned to Stanford and in 1956 was appointed the head of the new Department of Biochemistry. In 1957, Tatum left to accept a professorship at the Rockefeller Institute and stayed until his death. Tatum was a very supportive boss. He had his own goals for his lab, but never failed to actively encourage his students in their research interests. He was on the editorial board of science journals such as Genetics, Science, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Tatum also served as scientific advisor on many boards and helped set the national policy on training for students and post doctoral fellows. Tatum died in 1975 from heart failure complicated by emphysema from a lifetime of cigarette smoking. | |
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LinksNeurospora Sporulation RhythmChemistry professor Peter Ruoff studies enzymes and how they work in the biological systems. The site explains the growth cycle of Neurospora and shows a quick time movie of Neurospora growth taken by Dr. Van D. Gooch. Fungal Genetics Stock CenterLocated at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, the Fungal Genetics Stock Center (FGSC) is the repository of information on fungal strains like Neurospora. Intended for research scientists, the site has a methods section for handling and growing fungi, and fungal strains, and DNA can be ordered from them. The FGSC also puts out a newsletter. Bibliography
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