Word: amino
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bigger Game. Viruses are proteins, and are therefore made chiefly of amino acids. By delicate chemical methods, Stanley's group knocked out or added amino acids. Vigorous viruses became weak. Mild viruses turned into virulent killers. In one case a transformed virus transmitted its new character to its offspring. For the first time, man had succeeded in changing a virus' heredity...
...mixed two strains: one which could not produce vitamins, and another which could not produce certain amino acids. Because of experimental difficulties, Dr. Tatum did not see what happened next; but presently he had a crop of normal Escherichia coli. Their genetic completeness could come only from a combination of both strains. He concluded that the contrasting strains had mated and fused, the good qualities of each repairing the deficiencies of the other...
Sole previous method for producing gaint protein molecules directly involved the natural growth processes of living organisms. At the starting point of Woodward's process are alpha amino acids, which can readily be extracted from meat of vegetables...
Back in 1907 Emil Fisher, German chemist, painstakingly made an amino chain of 18 units, but chains of 10,000 units and up are already coming out in Woodward's laboratory. The new molecules may even outdo nature itself, which suggests that an entirely new field of plastics may be opened...
Medicine will be an immediate beneficiary of Woodward's discovery. The synthesis provides a model for the way the body digests and then synthesizes its proteins. Stomach juices act on proteins to reshuffle the natural amino acid chains into the solid parts of the body...