Personal Experiences with CSHL

[charles yanofsky]

I grew up in the Bronx in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science from 1939-1942. Largely due to the inspirational courses given at this school, I became extremely interested in the sciences - particularly biochemistry and genetics. In one of our courses the instructor described some very exciting recent findings on the basic principles of genetics, obtained in studies with Drosophila. We were told that if we wished to, we could purchase an experimental "Drosophila" kit from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and perform genetic crosses ourselves. I purchased a kit, which I believe contained parental strains and eye color mutants of both sexes. The kit came with instructions on how to perform crosses to confirm some of the concepts of genetics. I persuaded my mother to permit me to grow these flies in cotton-plugged milk bottles, in a closet in the kitchen of our apartment. She did not appreciate, nor did I, that our kitchen would soon become contaminated with small flies, curiously with differently colored eyes. This growing interest in genetics, and Drosophila, convinced me to join our High School's 'Drosophila Squad'. The objective of this Squad was to provide students with a microscope and all needed material to experience hands-on experimentation with fruit flies. I recall how pleased I was when I successfully prepared beautifully stained giant salivary chromosomes. I was proud of my photos, and showed them off for many years. As an additional benefit of attending this outstanding High School, we were taken on a single day's outing to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where we heard impressive lectures by several prominent geneticists. This visit increased my desire to learn more about genetics. While a high school student I prepared an exhibit displaying Monarch butterflies in their natural habitat, for competition in the Westinghouse Science Exhibit. I caught my butterflies close to home, on the New York University uptown campus in the Bronx. I also applied to spend a summer performing independent research on an original project of my own choosing, at the American Institute Science Laboratory, in Manhattan. I was delighted that my application was approved. I planned to exploit an idea that came to me while attending the 1939-1940 World's Fair in New York City. In one of the exhibits at the Fair a plastic material was featured that unlike glass, would allow ultraviolet light to penetrate. I proposed growing Drosophila flies in containers made from this plastic and then producing mutants by exposing flies in these containers to ultraviolet light, without ever removing them.

Despite my overwhelming interest in genetics and genetic research, I concluded from the material presented in the lectures in our courses, and the bias of my teachers, that the basic questions of genetics could not be answered using genetic analyses alone. Rather, the approaches of biochemistry would have to be applied to solve these problems. Accordingly, when I graduated from high school in 1942 I enrolled as a biochemistry major at CCNY. In fact, I did not take a single genetics course during my 3 1/2 years as a college student. After a year and half of undergraduate study I was drafted, and, in 1944, I fought in the infantry in the Battle of the Bulge, during World War II. My fascination for genetics and research remained, and, when given the opportunity immediately following the war to take a leave in Paris, I visited the Pasteur Institute, where my dedication to scientific research was renewed.

Upon returning to college, in 1946, I continued as a biochemistry major. In my last year, 1947-1948, I decided to apply to graduate school. Faced with the decisions - which subject to major in and who to apply to work with - I sought the advice of Dr. Benjamin Harrow, Chairman of our Biochemistry Department. Harrow, incidentally, was an author of one of the most widely used biochemistry textbooks at that time; his textbook was used in our biochemistry courses at CCNY. When I visited Harrow he pointed to one paragraph in his textbook in which he described the studies of George Beadle and Edward Tatum, and the new field they created, Biochemical Genetics. I read several of their original scientific papers, and some of their reviews, and decided that this was exactly what I wished to do - apply the approaches of biochemistry in answering the fundamental questions of genetics. I boldly applied to do my graduate work with George Beadle at CalTech or Edward Tatum at Yale. I was rejected by CalTech, but fortunately, accepted by Yale. As I recall I was so excited at the prospect of performing original research that I skipped my graduation ceremony at CCNY and promptly moved to New Haven. When I arrived at Yale I was surprised to learn that David Bonner had been assigned as my mentor. I was told that Tatum had left Yale to return to Stanford, and that Bonner, a product of the Beadle/Tatum school, had replaced him.

The members of the Bonner group, and of course Bonner himself, as well as most researchers working with Neurospora at that time, were obsessed with attempting to provide scientific evidence proving the one gene - one enzyme relationship proposed by Beadle and Tatum. But how? During this period genetics had emerged as one of the most exciting areas of biological research. Basic studies with Drosophila, Neurospora, phage, and bacteria, were revealing many of the fundamental features of genetic material and how it acts. During this period the annual Cold Spring Harbor Symposia often dealt with different aspects of genetics, which was appropriate since the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was an outstanding center for genetic research. I attended several Cold Spring Harbor Symposia, and ultimately, when my research was sufficiently advanced, I presented talks describing our scientific findings. To Dave Bonner and other scientists with similar interests, the annual Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was the major scientific event of the year. He presented talks at the 1951 and 1956 symposia, in the latter he described the results of our attempts to characterize the gene-enzyme relationship using a gene and enzyme from Neurospora. Of course, in 1953, the papers on the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick changed the field of genetics forever and forced us to redefine the gene-enzyme relationship as colinearity between a gene and its specified protein. One of our major goals as students, as I recall, was to try to generate sufficient new findings of interest to justify being invited to present a talk at a Cold Spring Harbor Symposium. My favorite photograph, which has been on the wall behind my desk for as long as I can remember, is a photo of Lewis Stadler, Carl Lindegren, Norman Giles, Donald Poulson and David Bonner, each a prominent geneticist, taken at the 1951 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium.

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