Recombinant DNA technologies developed in the early 1970s enabled scientists to isolate genes of interest and splice them into existing DNA structures. However, as late as the early 1980s, the molecular cloning process was horribly inefficient because it was difficult to integrate isolated genes with existing genomes. These challenges were unacceptable to Douglas Hanahan, currently director emeritus of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). To overcome them, he pioneered a new transformation method that now bears his name.1
In 1979, Hanahan joined Paul Doty’s laboratory at Harvard University to study techniques for cDNA cloning. “The goal was to first make recombinant DNA, convert it into cDNA using reverse transcriptase, then put it into plasmids, transform E. coli, and finally scale that up,” said Hanahan. However, his early forays met little success.
To complicate matters, Hanahan was caught in the ...
