Narration Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Some 35 years ago, I had the good fortune to be accepted into Ray Wu’s lab as a graduate student. Ray was already well known for his pioneering studies in DNA sequencing, and his lab was quietly humming with the excitement of the new approaches being developed for DNA labeling, sequencing and synthesis. Looking back, I am somewhat surprised that Ray accepted me into his lab-I was not a chemistry or biochemistry student, and I was transferring from another Department where I had become disillusioned with the prospects for completing a thesis project (of my own naïve design). I’d like to briefly recount the story of how I came to work for Ray, as I think it sheds some light on his personality, in particular the importance that he placed on the support and teaching of young, inexperienced students. If he saw potential in someone, he would do whatever it took to provide the opportunities and resources for that person to develop as a scientist. John Stiles, a fellow graduate student, and I had come up with what was, in 1973, a technically challenging but novel approach to the detection of a specific mRNA. The idea was based on the recent completion of a short stretch of the DNA sequence of the yeast iso-cytochrome c gene, which had been determined by the remarkable strategy of sequencing the protein products of a series of frameshift mutants (in Fred Sherman’s lab, in nearby Rochester, N.Y.). We felt that it should be possible to chemically synthesize a DNA probe that would allow us to detect the gene and its mRNA by hybridization. But how could we actually do this? The genetic tools for the project were available in Fred Sherman’s lab, but the chemical synthesis of DNA oligonucleotides was still a significant undertaking back then. Looking around at the Cornell faculty of the time, it seemed to us that Prof. Wu’s laboratory was the best and probably the only place that this project could be carried out. But would the famous Prof. Wu listen to a couple of unknown graduate students pushing a wild plan? It was with some trepidation that John and I went to see Prof. Wu, and nervously tried to explain the idea we had come up with. Fortunately, Ray was indeed intrigued by the idea. Although our proposal must have seemed somewhat obvious to him, Ray smiled and nodded and said that it sounded “very interesting” (only later would I learn what high praise this was coming from Ray Wu!). Eventually, Ray agreed to help us carry out our plan, and to arrange the necessary collabora