WhatIsBiotechnology
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WhatIsBiotechnology
@wibiotechnology.bsky.social
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WhatIsBiotechnology is a leading educational and public engagement platform that brings together the stories about the sciences, people and places that have enabled biotechnology to transform medicine and the world we live in today.
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2/ Murray's entrepreneurial efforts paved the way to the wide-scale adoption of monoclonal antibodies in research and their clinical application. For more about David Murray's life and work see 'https://www.whatisbiotechnology.org/.../summary/Murray'
1/ On Oct 21 1922 David Murray was born in Poole, Dorset, UK. Murray was the founder of Sera-Lab, the first biotechnology company to commercialise monoclonal antibodies.
5/ Avery's experiment showed that the harmless bacteria became lethal when mixed with DNA from the virulent bacteria. For more about this work see www.whatisbiotechnology.org/.../index/me...
4/ Following this they injected a mixture of heat-killed bacteria with the virulent bacteria into the mouse, which died. Finally they injected a mixture of harmless bacteria with DNA extracted from the heated lethal bacteria in a mouse which died.
3/ First they injected the virulent bacteria into the mouse, which went on to die. Next they injected the non-virulent bacteria into a mouse, which survived. They then heated the virulent bacteria to kill it and injected it into a mouse, which survived.
2/ In 1944 Avery's team conducted a series of experiments in mice using two sets of bacteria, one smooth (virulent) and the other rough (nonvirulent), associated with pneumonia.
1/ Oswald T Avery was born in Halifax, Canada, 21 Oct 1877. He was a physician and bacteriologist who provided the first evidence that that genes are made up of DNA.
2/ Nusslein-Volhard demonstrated this through her investigations of how genes regulate the early development of fruit flies. Her findings laid a pathway to understanding genetic defects in human embryos.
1/ Christiane Nusslein-Volhard was born in Magdeburg, Germany, 20 Oct 1942. Nusslein-Volhard shared the 1958 #NobelPrize for Medicine for discoveries relating to genetic control of early embryonic development.
3/ The marrow was treated to cleanse it of germs, but this process failed to eliminate an undetected dormant Epstein Barr virus which led to David getting infectious mononucleosis. David died less than two months after receiving the bone marrow transplant. He was twelve years old.
2/ David had spent all his life from birth isolated in a sterile plastic 'bubble' to prevent him from contracting disease. He was given the bone marrow from his older sister in the hope that it would stimulate the growth of his immune system.
1/ On 20 Oct 1983 a bone marrow transplant was performed in attempt to save life of David Vetter, who was born with severe combined immune deficiency, an inherited genetic disorder.
On 20 Oct 2013 the a drug candidate targeting GLP-1 and GIP were shown for the first time to reverse obesity and insulin resistance in animals. For more on the history of GLP-1 drugs see www.whatisbiotechnology.org/.../glp-1-ba....
2/ Goodpasture's method laid the foundation for the mass production of vaccines for diseases like smallpox, yellow fever, typhus and chicken pox. He was also a key pioneer in the development of the mumps vaccine.
1/ Ernest Goodpasture was born Clarksville, TN, USA, 17 Oct 1886. Goodpasture developed the first method for culturing uncontaminated viruses in chicken embryos and fertilised chicken eggs. Viruses were previously grown in living tissues which could be contaminated by bacteria.
4/ von Haller also put forward an accurate model of fetal growth during gestation, showing that the growth was faster at the beginning than later on.
3/ During his time von Haller put forward different theories about the nature of embryological development, one of which proposed that the new individual exists within the maternal egg prior to conception.
2/ von Haller also discovered that bile helps digest fats and made many contributions to understanding the distinction between nerve impulses and muscle contractions.
1/ Albrecht von Haller was born in Bern, Switzerland, 16 Oct 1708. Known as the father of modern physiology, von Haller was a physician who discovered the autonomous nature of the heart and the mechanism of respiration.
Stopes is best known for her campaigning work to make birth control available to women. In 1921 she helped to open the first clinic in London that offered birth control advice and dispensed contraception to poor mothers.
1/ Marie Stopes was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 15 Oct 1880. A trained botanist and geologist, Stopes was the first female academic to get a position at the University of Manchester where she conducted research on plant palaeontology and coal classification.
3/ Benzer's work laid the path to determining the detailed structure of viral genes. Benzer also coined the term cistron to denote functional subunits of genes. Together with Ronald Konopka, his student, Benzer also discovered the first gene to control an organism's sense of time, in 1971.
2/ In 1952 Benzer spotted abnormal behaviour in one mutant strain and a year later devised a technique to measure the recombination frequency between different r mutant strains to map the substructure of a single gene.
1/ Seymour Benzer was born in Brooklyn, NY, USA, 16 Oct 1921. A molecular biologist, Benzer proved that genetic mutations were caused by changes in the DNA sequence. This was based on some experiments he pursued with mutant T4 bacteriophages, known as r mutants.