The Discoverer
Nov. 22nd, 2013 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellestraI was so busy at work and so occupied by Doctor Who outside of it that I only learned today that Frederick Sanger died on Tuesday.
For someone like me his name is forever associated with Sanger sequencing - the first and until recently most widely used method of sequencing DNA - finding out the order of nucleotides in genomes that let us understand how they work. Now it has been largely supplanted by Next Generation Sequencing methods that are much faster and have higher throughput but Sanger sequencing is still used by many to sequence small DNA samples (it takes forever to use it for whole genomes). It's till the most accurate method, especially for longer fragments. That was his second Nobel award.
His firs Nobel came from as revolutionary protein sequencing. Back when he started it wasn't sure if the proteins have some definitive composition and when he determined complete amino acid sequence of the two polypeptide chains of bovine insulin he has shown that proteins have a defined chemical composition - an amino acid sequence.
His work changed all our lives - from diabetics who get insulin shots to all the products of genomic studies. To me - he made my field possible. Molecular genetics wouldn't be what it is without him.
For someone like me his name is forever associated with Sanger sequencing - the first and until recently most widely used method of sequencing DNA - finding out the order of nucleotides in genomes that let us understand how they work. Now it has been largely supplanted by Next Generation Sequencing methods that are much faster and have higher throughput but Sanger sequencing is still used by many to sequence small DNA samples (it takes forever to use it for whole genomes). It's till the most accurate method, especially for longer fragments. That was his second Nobel award.
His firs Nobel came from as revolutionary protein sequencing. Back when he started it wasn't sure if the proteins have some definitive composition and when he determined complete amino acid sequence of the two polypeptide chains of bovine insulin he has shown that proteins have a defined chemical composition - an amino acid sequence.
His work changed all our lives - from diabetics who get insulin shots to all the products of genomic studies. To me - he made my field possible. Molecular genetics wouldn't be what it is without him.
