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MODEL
Research in Microbiology xx (2014) 1 www.elsevier.com/locate/resmic
Q1
Through postdoc eyes
Q4
Ethan Signer a,b,*
Q2 b
a MIT, USA CHDI Management, Inc., CHDI Foundation, 350 Seventh Avenue, Suite 601, New York, NY 10001, USA
Received 26 March 2014; accepted 6 May 2014
Keywords: François Jacob; Lac operon; Episome; Bacteriophage lambda; Lysogeny; Transduction
Timing matters. In 1957 the Soviet Union orbited the first satellite, and a shocked US government responded by sinking big money into scientific training. Now there were graduate and postdoctoral fellowships to be had. By the early 1960s many of us had our eye on a few labs in Europe who were doing cutting-edge work, and François Jacob's at the Institut Pasteur, where I was fortunate to spend two postdoctoral years, was certainly one of those. Molecular biology was new and exploding, and being in the midst of it was manna for the brain. And in the City of Light, no less. The lab culture was a bit formaldit didn't feel right to address M. Jacob as anything but that, never by given name as I was used to with other mentors. And the decor was a little oldfashioned, still with cotton plugs keeping the glassware sterile. But I was part of a bright, talented, lively gang of postdocs in his group and Jacques Monod's, many of us American, and there were also Andre Lwoff, Elie Wollman and their colleagues to interact with, and a stream of visiting scientists passing through as well. What better place to learn a lot and work a lot and produce a lot and live the Golden Age. I left at the time of the watershed 1966 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium. M. Jacob declined to attend “the death knell of molecular biology” but it really was a pinnacle, the end of a pioneering era in which François Jacob and Jacques Monod played no small part. Images of the time linger: M. Jacob, tall and white-coated, slightly stooped, plumbing the depths of thought as he prowled the corridor of the grenier, the attic at the old Pasteur that housed the group; or sitting calmly in a seminar with a small smile as a
Q3
* CHDI Management, Inc., CHDI Foundation, 350 Seventh Avenue, Suite 601, New York, NY 10001, USA. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected].
heated discussion swirled around him; or just chatting at the long table where many of the Jacob, Monod, Lwoff and Wollman groupsdso few were we thendhad lunch together every day. I shared a lab room, first with Jon Beckwith and then with Julian Davies, and trading ideas on a daily basis was a heady experience in itself. Jon was working on an Escherichia coli lac operon moved via an episome to various chromosomal locations while I was studying lysogeny and transduction in bacteriophage l. The two projects happened to intersect and eventually allowed us to show that virtually any E. coli gene could be stably incorporated into a viral genome, all in vivodbaby steps toward genetic engineering. Yet even though the location work sprang initially from findings of his graduate student François Cuzin, M. Jacob gave us complete freedom to pursue the project wherever it led. It's remarkable how generously supportive he was, easily approachable, ready to discuss experiments, making his lab's resources available. I used to waylay him in the corridor with my latest hot-offthe-agar result, and he might have a comment. More typically he wouldn't say much at all on the spot. Instead, a day or two later he'd be back with a penetrating insight, worth waiting for. I couldn't help but wonder whether François Jacob was content to bide his time until something happened along to pique his interest and engage his mind. The phlegmatic mien was quite opposite to that of Jacques Monod, who would cheerfully discuss anything as long as it wasn't boring, the more gymnastic the better. What they had in common, though, was astonishing intuition, the ability to arrive at the right interpretation even when it seemed at first to contradict the data. The entire experience was infused with their personalities, and together theydand for me, being in his lab, M. Jacob in particulardcreated an intellectual atmosphere that was not only immensely powerful and exciting but, no less important, just plain fun.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resmic.2014.05.029 0923-2508/© 2014 Institut Pasteur. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Signer E, Through postdoc eyes, Research in Microbiology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resmic.2014.05.029
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RESMIC3297_proof ■ 24 May 2014 ■ 1/1
MODEL
Research in Microbiology xx (2014) 1 www.elsevier.com/locate/resmic
Q1
Through postdoc eyes
Q4
Ethan Signer a,b,*
Q2 b
a MIT, USA CHDI Management, Inc., CHDI Foundation, 350 Seventh Avenue, Suite 601, New York, NY 10001, USA
Received 26 March 2014; accepted 6 May 2014
Keywords: François Jacob; Lac operon; Episome; Bacteriophage lambda; Lysogeny; Transduction
Timing matters. In 1957 the Soviet Union orbited the first satellite, and a shocked US government responded by sinking big money into scientific training. Now there were graduate and postdoctoral fellowships to be had. By the early 1960s many of us had our eye on a few labs in Europe who were doing cutting-edge work, and François Jacob's at the Institut Pasteur, where I was fortunate to spend two postdoctoral years, was certainly one of those. Molecular biology was new and exploding, and being in the midst of it was manna for the brain. And in the City of Light, no less. The lab culture was a bit formaldit didn't feel right to address M. Jacob as anything but that, never by given name as I was used to with other mentors. And the decor was a little oldfashioned, still with cotton plugs keeping the glassware sterile. But I was part of a bright, talented, lively gang of postdocs in his group and Jacques Monod's, many of us American, and there were also Andre Lwoff, Elie Wollman and their colleagues to interact with, and a stream of visiting scientists passing through as well. What better place to learn a lot and work a lot and produce a lot and live the Golden Age. I left at the time of the watershed 1966 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium. M. Jacob declined to attend “the death knell of molecular biology” but it really was a pinnacle, the end of a pioneering era in which François Jacob and Jacques Monod played no small part. Images of the time linger: M. Jacob, tall and white-coated, slightly stooped, plumbing the depths of thought as he prowled the corridor of the grenier, the attic at the old Pasteur that housed the group; or sitting calmly in a seminar with a small smile as a
Q3
* CHDI Management, Inc., CHDI Foundation, 350 Seventh Avenue, Suite 601, New York, NY 10001, USA. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected].
heated discussion swirled around him; or just chatting at the long table where many of the Jacob, Monod, Lwoff and Wollman groupsdso few were we thendhad lunch together every day. I shared a lab room, first with Jon Beckwith and then with Julian Davies, and trading ideas on a daily basis was a heady experience in itself. Jon was working on an Escherichia coli lac operon moved via an episome to various chromosomal locations while I was studying lysogeny and transduction in bacteriophage l. The two projects happened to intersect and eventually allowed us to show that virtually any E. coli gene could be stably incorporated into a viral genome, all in vivodbaby steps toward genetic engineering. Yet even though the location work sprang initially from findings of his graduate student François Cuzin, M. Jacob gave us complete freedom to pursue the project wherever it led. It's remarkable how generously supportive he was, easily approachable, ready to discuss experiments, making his lab's resources available. I used to waylay him in the corridor with my latest hot-offthe-agar result, and he might have a comment. More typically he wouldn't say much at all on the spot. Instead, a day or two later he'd be back with a penetrating insight, worth waiting for. I couldn't help but wonder whether François Jacob was content to bide his time until something happened along to pique his interest and engage his mind. The phlegmatic mien was quite opposite to that of Jacques Monod, who would cheerfully discuss anything as long as it wasn't boring, the more gymnastic the better. What they had in common, though, was astonishing intuition, the ability to arrive at the right interpretation even when it seemed at first to contradict the data. The entire experience was infused with their personalities, and together theydand for me, being in his lab, M. Jacob in particulardcreated an intellectual atmosphere that was not only immensely powerful and exciting but, no less important, just plain fun.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resmic.2014.05.029 0923-2508/© 2014 Institut Pasteur. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Signer E, Through postdoc eyes, Research in Microbiology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resmic.2014.05.029
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