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Cancer, Viruses, and Mass Migration: Paul Berg’s Venture into Eukaryotic Biology and the Advent of Recombinant DNA Research and Technology, 1967–1980

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Abstract

The existing literature on the development of recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering tends to focus on Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer’s recombinant DNA cloning technology and its commercialization starting in the mid-1970s. Historians of science, however, have pointedly noted that experimental procedures for making recombinant DNA molecules were initially developed by Stanford biochemist Paul Berg and his colleagues, Peter Lobban and A. Dale Kaiser in the early 1970s. This paper, recognizing the uneasy disjuncture between scientific authorship and legal invention in the history of recombinant DNA technology, investigates the development of recombinant DNA technology in its full scientific context. I do so by focusing on Stanford biochemist Berg’s research on the genetic regulation of higher organisms. As I hope to demonstrate, Berg’s new venture reflected a mass migration of biomedical researchers as they shifted from studying prokaryotic organisms like bacteria to studying eukaryotic organisms like mammalian and human cells. It was out of this boundary crossing from prokaryotic to eukaryotic systems through virus model systems that recombinant DNA technology and other significant new research techniques and agendas emerged. Indeed, in their attempt to reconstitute ‹life’ as a research technology, Stanford biochemists’ recombinant DNA research recast genes as a sequence that could be rewritten thorough biochemical operations. The last part of this paper shifts focus from recombinant DNA technology’s academic origins to its transformation into a genetic engineering technology by examining the wide range of experimental hybridizations which occurred as techniques and knowledge circulated between Stanford biochemists and the Bay Area’s experimentalists. Situating their interchange in a dense research network based at Stanford’s biochemistry department, this paper helps to revise the canonized history of genetic engineering’s origins that emerged during the patenting of Cohen–Boyer’s recombinant DNA cloning procedures.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Angela Creager and Michael Mahoney for their advice during the various stages of my research and writing. Attendants of the 2005 meeting of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology asked useful questions – especially Nathaniel Comfort (as chair of my session) and Michel Morange, who subsequently read the paper in draft. Soraya de Chadarevian, Sally Hughes, Joseph November, and Bruno Strasser commented on an earlier version of this draft, for which I am very grateful. I appreciate comments from participants at Princeton University’s 2006–2007 History of Science Program Seminar, especially those from Daniel Bouk, Michael Gordin, Nam Ha, John Krige, Tania Munz, and many others. I especially thank the anonymous reviewers for their nuanced readings and excellent suggestions, and Nam Ha for his editorial help. Stanford biochemists Paul Berg, David Hogness, A. Dale Kaiser, Arthur Kornberg, Peter Lobban, Janet Mertz, and Charles Yanofsky offered their recollections and valuable guidance for my research and provided access to materials still in their possession. Stanley Cohen at Stanford University provided his recollections on the development of molecular cloning technology. Katherine Ku, current director of Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing, granted access to its Archive. Stanford University’s History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Program, especially Jessica Riskin, welcomed me and provided a valuable institutional affiliation. This research was generously supported by a dissertation research grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-0522502). I remain responsible for the interpretation offered and any errors in this paper.

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Yi, D. Cancer, Viruses, and Mass Migration: Paul Berg’s Venture into Eukaryotic Biology and the Advent of Recombinant DNA Research and Technology, 1967–1980. J Hist Biol 41, 589–636 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-008-9149-9

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