Word: proteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...special trick to make the experiment work," Gilbert says. The insulin gene is inserted into a plasmid at a site before the end of another gene, which codes for a protein known as penicillinase. The insulin and penicillinase proteins are synthesized in a fused form when the genes are read together...
...penicillinase, a natural product of the bacteria, serves as a carrier and marker, transporting the insulin to the cell surface where it normally resides. At the surface, the penicillinase and insulin can be exposed to certain radioactively labeled substances which attach specifically to these two proteins. Bacterial cells which are successfully manufacturing the protein are thus identified...
Interferon is a large hormone-like protein produced by the cells of all vertebrate animals. It was discovered in 1957 in Britain by Virologists Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann during their investigation of a curious phenomenon: people are almost never infected by more than one virus at a time. Seeking an explanation, the researchers infected cells from chick embryos with influenza virus. What they found was a substance that protected the chick cells from both the flu and other viruses. Because it interfered with the infection process, it was dubbed interferon...
Subsequently, other researchers learned that the protein had antitumor as well as antiviral properties. Though exactly how it works is still a mystery, interferon appears not only to block the uncontrolled cell division that is characteristic of cancer but also to stimulate the body's immune system to kill cancer cells. Interferon has another plus; apparently because it is produced in the body, it has none of the unpleasant and debilitating side effects that accompany conventional cancer chemotherapy...
...recently as the early 1960s, medicine had little to offer patients with impaired gastrointestinal tracts besides the standard intravenous feeding of sugar water. Even if fortified with vitamins and minerals and supplemented with predigested protein, the sugar solution provides only 500 to 600 calories a day, and not enough nutrients to meet the body's needs. Dr. Dudrick came face to face with the nutrition problem one weekend in 1961 when, as a young surgical intern in Philadelphia, he helped perform successful operations on three patients only to have them die from what the chief surgeon diagnosed as malnutrition...