In 1953, a few weeks after James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the shape of DNA and forever changed biology, Sydney Brenner, a young South African, arrived in England. Later he moved into their work space at the famed Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. Brenner soon became one of the great pioneers of molecular biology, working with Crick to tease out the basics of how genes work.
In the decades that followed, Brenner helped launch the concept of using complex model organisms to figure out how genes function. In 2002 he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in discovering the genetics of cell development by using the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. At age 77, he continues to actively run labs from La Jolla, California, where he is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute.
You have been at this molecular biology thing for more than 50 years. What interests you now?
SB: I’ve just finished a project mostly done in Singapore, using the puffer fish to understand what certain genes do. This we did by actually putting the puffer fish genes into mice and showing that the mouse “reads” them correctly. Another project is what I call a cell map. Basically, I’m interested in the same old problem: How do the genes map onto the phenotype?
Do you mean, how do genes functionally affect organisms?
