- Person
- Sydney Brenner
- Lived
- 1927–2019
- Field
- Molecular biology
- From
- South African-British
The story
Sydney Brenner, the son of Jewish immigrants to South Africa, had helped crack the genetic code and discover messenger RNA at Cambridge by the early 1960s. He then turned to a harder question: how genes build a complex animal and its brain. Mammals were far too complicated to study cell by cell, and bacteria and yeast were too simple. He needed a creature in between.
He chose Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent soil worm about a millimetre long that grows from egg to adult in a few days. Because it is transparent, its cells can be watched dividing under a microscope. In a landmark 1974 paper Brenner showed how to create mutations in the worm with the chemical EMS, linked them to about a hundred genes, and connected particular genes to particular effects on the animal's development.
Working with John White, Nicol Thomson and others at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, he then reconstructed the worm's entire anatomy from serial electron microscope images, producing the first complete wiring diagram of an animal's nervous system. His colleague John Sulston traced the origin of every one of the adult worm's 959 cells, and Robert Horvitz used the worm to identify the first genes that make cells die on schedule, a process called programmed cell death. Corresponding genes were soon found in humans. Brenner, Sulston and Horvitz shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with the Nobel committee crediting Brenner's discoveries as the foundation.
The Nobel committee explained why this matters for patients. Too much cell death destroys cells in AIDS, stroke, heart attacks and neurodegenerative diseases, while too little lets cancer cells survive when they should die, and many cancer treatments work by switching on the cell's suicide programme. C. elegans is still studied worldwide and has led to breakthroughs in many areas of biology.
Why it matters
Research in Brenner's worm revealed genes for programmed cell death that are shared with humans, informing work on cancer, stroke and neurodegenerative disease.
About Sydney Brenner
Cobbler’s son from South Africa who helped crack the genetic code, co-discovered messenger RNA and made the tiny worm C. elegans a model for studying genes, development and disease. Nobel Prize 2002.
More about Sydney Brenner
Sources
- Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002 NobelPrize.org
- Sydney Brenner 1927-2019 MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
- Sydney Brenner, Biographical NobelPrize.org
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.