Word: kornbergs
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Using laboratory skills that were unheard of a generation ago, scientists have isolated, put together and manipulated genes, and have come close to creating life itself. In 1967 Stanford University's Arthur Kornberg synthesized in a test tube a single strand of DNA that was actually able to make a duplicate of itself. Kornberg's "creation" was only a copy of a virus, a coated bit of genetic material that occupies a twilight zone between the living and inanimate. But many scientists have become convinced that they may eventually be able to create functioning, living cells...
Ingenious as the theory was, scientists still demanded proof that the molecule actually replicated itself. That proof was quick to come. By 1956, Arthur Kornberg, then at Washington University in St. Louis, discovered an enzyme, or natural chemical catalyst (which he named "DNA polymerase") that was apparently critical to some of the activities of the double helix. Once he obtained enough of the enzyme, he placed it in a test-tube brew with a bit of natural DNA, one of whose strands was incomplete, the four bases (A, T, C, G) and a few other off-the-shelf chemicals. True...
Some McCarthy dropouts strike a wistful note. Says Nobel Prizewinning Biochemist Arthur Kornberg of Stan ford, who had never worked in politics before the McCarthy campaign: "I thought I could make some contribution, but it is very disappointing to have the business-as-usual people tak ing over." McCarthy's celebrity corner is largely in despair. Actor Walter Matthau calls the Humphrey-Nixon face-off "a choice between strychnine and arsenic." Paul Newman, one of McCarthy's busiest advocates at the convention, promises "a month of serious drinking" before he decides whether to support Humphrey actively, though...
...that active DNA has been synthesized, says Kornberg, it may be possible to alter the chemical structure of the laboratory-produced material at will...
...technique could have other far-reaching effects. The polyoma virus, which produces a variety of cancers in many animals, is almost identical in size and complexity to Phi X 174. "If one can take the polyoma DNA and modify it in the test tube by implanting alternate genes," says Kornberg, "some of these could prevent the growth of cancer cells...