ABOVE: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia blood smear
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Sitting at a lab bench at MIT in the late 1970s, Owen Witte finally had to admit he was stuck. He had identified a cancer-causing protein encoded in the genome of the Abelson murine leukemia virus, which infects mice. Prior work had led Witte to hypothesize that this protein should be a kinase, an enzyme that attaches phosphoryl groups to amino acids. But after double- and triple-checking his methods and repeating the experiments several times, he failed to find evidence that this was the case.
Witte’s idea that the Abelson murine leukemia virus (A-MuLV) protein should be a protein kinase stemmed primarily from work by molecular biologist Raymond Erikson, then at the University of Colorado, and his colleagues. They had shown that the oncogenic viral gene src was associated with protein kinases, and Witte expected to find something similar with A-MuLV. He ...
