Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 19, No. 25 7041
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`Paul Berg, on his 65th birthday, speaking at the Symposium organised in honour of the occasion.
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`Foreword
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`Paul Berg was born on 30th June 1926 in New York City. He grew up in the Brooklyn community of Seagate and attended the Abraham Lincoln
`High School, which had, some years earlier, numbered Arthur Kornberg amongst its pupils. Paul's undergraduate study at Pennsylvania State
`College was interrupted by service in the United States Navy but he graduated with a B.S. in biochemistry in 1948 and then went to Western
`Reserve University in Cleveland to work for his Ph.D with Warwick Sakami and Harland Wood. His thesis work was concerned with one carbon
`metabolism and he pursued his interest in metabolic biochemistry during a Post-Doctoral period in Herman Kalckar's laboratory at the Institute
`of Cytophysiology in Copenhagen, where he worked on nucleoside diphosphokinase. A second Post-Doctoral year was spent with Arthur Kornberg
`in the Department of Microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis. During this period Paul's interest in the synthesis of acetyl-CoA led
`him to study acyl adenylates and from there it was but a brief step to aminoacyl adenylates and thus to the enzymes that we now know as aminoacyl-
`tRNA synthetases, and an interest in the mechanisms that underlie the transfer of genetic information that has remained to the present. In 1955
`Paul was appointed to the Faculty of the Department of Microbiology and in 1959 he moved to the new Department of Biochemistry at Stanford
`University Medical School where he has remained. He is currently Willson Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Beckman Center for
`Molecular and Genetic Medicine.
`Paul's contributions to the study of nucleic acids are enormous. For many years he undertook outstanding studies of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases,
`and of the mechanisms of genetic suppression, and he also worked extensively on RNA polymerase. In 1967 he went to the Salk Institute for
`a sabbatical year in Renato Dulbecco's laboratory with the intention of learning about polyoma, a newly characterised virus which, because of
`its small genome size and ease of growth in cell culture, seemed to offer the opportunity of applying the experimental approaches that had been
`so successful with bacteriophage to the study of eukaryotic genes. On his return to Stanford, Paul began to work with the closely related monkey
`virus, SV40, and soon realised that the enzymology that had always been his first love could be applied to the manipulation of the viral genome
`and to the construction of recombinant DNA molecules. There soon followed the seminal paper that described for the first time the joining together
`of two unrelated DNA molecules and a major body of work in which the power of nucleic acid enzymology was deployed in the mapping of
`the viral genome and in the construction of predetermined mutations.
`These first recombinant DNA experiments excited enormous interest, and apprehension, both within and without the scientific community. Paul
`played a leading role in the discussions of both the safety and the ethics of the new work and was instrumental in the establishment of the guidelines
`that allowed the science to move forward in a fashion that society as a whole found acceptable. Once the moratorium was lifted Paul's laboratory
`was at the forefront of the development of vector systems for mammalian cells and he continued throughout the 1980s to pursue the refinement
`of such systems, focussing most recently on vectors for homologous recombination and on the mechanisms of recombination.
`Paul's work has been recognised by the international scientific community with many awards, most notably the Eli Lilly Prize of the American
`Chemical Society in 1959, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1980 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, also in 1980. The Nobel
`Committee cited him for his 'fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant DNA'.
`These public facts tell only part of the story. For those of us privileged to have worked in his laboratory, Paul defines all that is good about
`the pursuit of science. A fierce critic, as much of himself as of others, yet a wonderful supporter and a source of continuous encouragement;
`an inspired teacher and a marvellous friend and colleague. Above all, he taught us how to do science properly and responsibly.
`All of the papers in this special issue of Nucleic Acids Research are authored by former students, post-doctoral fellows and sabbatical colleagues
`of Paul's. We dedicated this volume to him, in honour of his 65th birthday, with profound thanks for all that he has done for us and in recognition
`of his outstanding contributions to our knowledge of the nucleic acids.
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`Peter Rigby
`Tom Shenk
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`Genzyme Ex. 1023, pg 711