Paul Berg, a Nobel Prize-winning genetic engineering pioneer, died at the age of 96

 February 21, 2023

Paul Berg, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who successfully combined DNA from two different organisms in 1971, died on Wednesday at his home on the Stanford University campus in California. He was 96.

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Following his breakthrough with DNA, Dr. Berg convened a historic gathering of scientists to establish safeguards against the misuse of genetic research.

He was a well-known researcher at Stanford University when, in 1971, he oversaw the artificial introduction of DNA from one virus into another, resulting in the first recombinant DNA, or rDNA. The breakthrough was the first in a series of breakthroughs that have led to the genetic engineering of new therapeutic treatments for diseases and vaccines, such as the messenger RNA variants used to combat the virus that causes COVID-19.

Dr. Berg's research earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980, which he shared with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger for their work on genetic sequencing. Dr. Berg stated at a Nobel banquet that his research had provided him with "the indescribable exhilaration, the ultimate high, that accompanies discovery, the breaking of new ground, the entering into areas where man had not been before."

DNA, also known as deoxyribonucleic acid, is the spiral staircase-shaped strand of molecules that carries the code by which cells duplicate themselves. Dr. Berg demonstrated that the blueprint could be changed and cells created to produce offspring that could do or not do very different things than the original cells.

"One morning Paul and I got together, and he suggested that we try to put new genes into SV40 DNA and use the recombinant molecules to introduce foreign DNA into animal cells," David A. Jackson, a postdoctoral fellow who was one of Dr. Berg's trainees, later recalled to Dr. Berg's biographer, Errol C. Friedberg.

The researchers incorporated a virus DNA fragment (circular DNA) that can be propagated in E. coli bacteria into a simian virus (a circular SV40 DNA genome). An enzyme was used to convert each of the circular DNAs into linear DNAs. These linear DNAs were modified using an existing technique so that the modified ends attracted each other. The two DNAs recombined and formed a loop of rDNA containing the genes from the two different organisms.

Dr. Berg and his colleagues began preparing for the next step, which was to insert the rDNA into E. coli and animal cells. As word of Dr. Berg's work spread, he was challenged to ensure that this newly created DNA—which, after all, contained material from a virus that lived in one of the world's most common bacteria, E. coli—did not escape the laboratory and cause irreparable harm.

Dr. Berg recognised that such absolute certainty was not possible at the time, and he halted further experiments, despite the fact that other researchers quickly moved forward.

During a break in his experiments, Dr. Berg focused on the larger ethical and public health issues raised by gene manipulation, including human genes. He was well placed to help organise a conference in Asilomar, Calif., in February 1975, as a public figure who had testified before Congress in favour of federal funding for basic scientific research and who had a wide range of contacts among biochemists.

By : THE NEW YORK TIMES