BILL SAWALICH/BARLOW PRODUCTIONSElaine Mardis was in the right place at the right time. During her senior year as a zoology major at Oklahoma University, Mardis found herself at loose ends. “It wasn’t readily apparent to me what to do next,” she says. “Then I took a biochemistry class—and the instructor was one Bruce A. Roe. He started teaching us about this incredible world of molecular biology and it really opened my eyes. Very quickly, fruit fly genetics—which is what I was doing for my honors thesis—began to seem pretty mundane and boring, compared to working with DNA and enzymes at a molecular level.”
Mardis graduated in 1984, and Roe convinced her to apply for graduate school—and to join his lab. “He was transitioning away from being a tRNA guy to becoming more active in DNA sequencing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Bruce had learned DNA sequencing directly from Fred Sanger.” By the time Mardis had finished her coursework and was ready to knuckle down in the lab, a company called Applied Biosystems came out with the first commercially available DNA sequencer that used fluorescence instead of radiolabeled nucleotides. “Bruce, by a variety of surreptitious means that weren’t entirely clear, found $100,000, flew out to California, and brought back the second instrument that Applied Biosystems produced.” Mardis jumped in with both feet. “Some of the first ...
