Contains: 8 images
In copyright
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Credit
"What is a gene?". In copyright. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Text, undated, of a talk, with the title "What is a gene?"
Internal evidence - for example, an opening remark referring to "some recent work on the fine structure of the gene" (p. 1), and remarks in the closing paragraph (p. 8) concerning Seymour Benzer - suggest that the talk was probably given in 1956:
"Finally we may ask - what next? It is a very reasonable speculation that each gene controls, directly or indirectly, the production of a particular protein molecule. More precisely, that it controls the order of the amino acids in one polypeptide chain of a protein molecule which the cell is producing under its influence. What we suspect is that the linear order inside a gene corresponds to the linear order of amino acids along the polypeptide chain of the relevant protein. If we could find the protein controlled by Dr Benzer's gene we might be able to discover, with modern techniques, the change in the order of the amino acids produced by any particular mutant. If we could do this we could soon see if the two orders - the linear mapping of the gene and the linear arrangement of the amino acids - were related. Dr Benzer is coming to work with us at Cambridge next year, and this is exactly what we shall try to do."
Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation (1996), p. 435, notes that Benzer spent 1957-58 at the Cavendish Laboratory.
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