A hen's leg with osteochondrosarcoma, circa 1912 Credit: © Jason varney | Varneyphoto.com" />A hen's leg with osteochondrosarcoma, circa 1912 Credit: © Jason varney | Varneyphoto.com It was not odd that an upstate New York farmer would bring a sick Plymouth Rock hen to Peyton Rous at the Rockefeller Institute in 1909, nor that Rous would be interested in the case. Two years earlier, Hungarian veterinarian Joseph Marek had identified the costly, highly transmissible visceral

Mario Geysen's combinatorial library, circa 1984. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer" />Mario Geysen's combinatorial library, circa 1984. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer In the early 1980s, Mario Geysen, working for Australia's Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, hoped to mimic an antigenic epitope for foot and mouth virus that could become the basis for a vaccine. Without knowing the natural epitope's chemical composition, however, he had to consider a very large number of possible pep

The mass manufacture of penicillin during World War II stimulated urgent interest in other medicinally important soil microorganisms.

Credit: Courtesy of Alan Hawk / Historical Collections National Museum of Health and Medicine" /> Credit: Courtesy of Alan Hawk / Historical Collections National Museum of Health and Medicine As biochemists during the 1970s delved into the protein chemistry of cell signaling, cycling, and adhesion, they ran into two major obstacles: getting enough purified material for some proteins, and the low molecular weights of others. Interferon, for example, was so difficult to purify that it

On May 27, 1961, Heinrich Matthaei, a postdoc working with NIH scientist Marshal Nirenberg, placed synthetic polyuracil RNA into 20 test tubes to see what it would produce. Each tube contained cytoplasmic extract from Escherichia coli and a specific radiolabeled amino acid. Ribosomes from the tube containing labeled phenylalanine came back 'hot,' and the world was a step closer to understanding the genetic code.CLICK HERE for a larger version of this image

A vial of Koch?s Tuburculin from 1895 resides at Charité Hospital, Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer" />A vial of Koch?s Tuburculin from 1895 resides at Charité Hospital, Berlin. Credit: Courtesy of Terry Sharrer Robert Koch (1843?1910), who isolated Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882 and proved that it caused tuberculosis, announced at a medical congress in Berlin eight years later that he had developed a substance capable of preventing the growth of the tub

Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER When Leonard Hayflick began his cell culture work at the Wistar Institute in the 1950s, the field was facing a nagging problem. Culture flasks were so big, that microscope objective lenses couldn't come reasonably close to the subject. Hayflick told his Leitz sales representative about the problem, and the sales rep returned with an inverted chemist's microscope popular among crystallographers. With slight modifi

The black 6 mouse, above, was developed around 1920 by Clarence Cook Little (1881-1971), below. Credit: COURTESY OF THE JACKSON LABORATORY ARCHIVES" />The black 6 mouse, above, was developed around 1920 by Clarence Cook Little (1881-1971), below. Credit: COURTESY OF THE JACKSON LABORATORY ARCHIVES As a boy, Clarence Cook Little kept mice as pets, but his hobby became serious inquiry when he began studying Mendelian inheritance of mouse coat color under William Castle at Harvard Univer

A 1985 prototype of a semi-automated thermal cycler, hot and cold water baths not included. Credit: Courtesy of The Smithsonian Institution" />A 1985 prototype of a semi-automated thermal cycler, hot and cold water baths not included. Credit: Courtesy of The Smithsonian Institution The "aha" moment and initial experiments in 1983 through which Kary Mullis developed the idea of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are a well trodden story.1 While Mullis says he immediately realized PCR?s pote

Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER In a series of experiments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stanley Cohen, Herbert Boyer, and their colleagues developed the techniques necessary to recombine genes in bacterial plasmids, allowing for their mass production and launching recombinant biotechnology as we know it. In 1973, the Cohen-Boyer team introduced a plasmid fragment from one strain of Escherichia coli, conferring kanamycin resistance in

Stanford Moore and William Stein pictured at the Moore-Stein-Spackman analyzer, 1965. Credit: COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION" />Stanford Moore and William Stein pictured at the Moore-Stein-Spackman analyzer, 1965. Credit: COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION Frederick Sanger presented the first complete amino acid sequence of a protein (insulin) after 12 years of painstaking biochemistry involving partial hydrolysis and proteolytic cleavage. Needless to say, the process co

Celebrating the woman who gave the world its first immortalized cell line

Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER (FLASK), GRETCHEN DARLINGTON (INSET)" /> Credit: COURTESY OF TERRY SHARRER (FLASK), GRETCHEN DARLINGTON (INSET) Growing cells outside the body began in 1907 with the work of Ross Harrison at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and continued in the hands of Alexis Carrel and Montrose Burrows at the Rockefeller Institute. These investigators figured out the nutrient solutions that kept cells alive for extended periods of time and allowed them to

Illustration: A. Canamucio Orphan diseases are those with patient populations so small that drug companies generally don't make money if they come up with a remedy. The National Organization for Rare Disorders lists 1,100 of these afflictions in its database, from Aarskog syndrome, an extremely rare birth defect with structural abnormalities and mild mental retardation, to Zollinger Ellison syndrome, presenting gastric tumors that secrete excessive hormone amounts. Subsets of rare disorders, suc