- Person
- Paul Berg
- Lived
- 1926–2023
- Field
- Biochemistry
- From
- American
The story
Paul Berg was born in Brooklyn in 1926, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. After wartime service in the Navy and a doctorate in biochemistry, he moved to Stanford University in 1959 with Arthur Kornberg to build a new department of biochemistry. By the mid-1960s he wanted to understand how genes work in the cells of mammals, which were far harder to study than bacteria.
After a sabbatical learning to work with animal viruses in Renato Dulbecco's laboratory at the Salk Institute, Berg had an idea. The monkey virus SV40 naturally carries its small circle of DNA into mammalian cells. If other genes could be attached to it, the virus might carry them in too, the way some bacterial viruses move genes between bacteria. To try it, his team had to find a general way to join two unrelated pieces of DNA.
Working with David Jackson and Robert Symons, Berg cut open the circular DNA of SV40 and a circle of DNA from a bacterial virus carrying genes from the bacterium E. coli, including genes for using the sugar galactose. Using enzymes, they added matching sticky tails to the cut ends, mixed the pieces and sealed them into new circles containing DNA from both sources. The result, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, was the first man-made recombinant DNA molecule.
The technique opened the door to isolating, studying and using individual genes. Within a few years scientists could make bacteria produce human proteins, and genetic engineering became a new industry. Berg received half of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. Colleagues noted that he always declined to patent his findings and shared results before publication, rare in a competitive field. Stanford Medicine summed up his legacy by saying the work set in motion genetic engineering, which has led to lifesaving drugs and new avenues of genetic research.
Why it matters
Recombinant DNA, which Berg pioneered, is how medicines such as human insulin, clotting factors and many antibody drugs are made today, and it underpins modern genetic research.
About Paul Berg
Brooklyn-born biochemist who made the first recombinant DNA, launching genetic engineering, then paused his own work and led the Asilomar meeting that set its safety rules. Nobel Prize 1980.
More about Paul Berg
Sources
- Paul Berg, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Nobel laureate Paul Berg dies at 96 Stanford Medicine
- Paul Berg Science History Institute
- The Paul Berg Papers: Biographical Overview National Library of Medicine, Profiles in Science
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