Biographical Memoirs Volume 54 (1983) / Chapter Skim
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Colin Munro MacLeod
Colin Munro MacLeod
Pages 182-219
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From page 183... ...
On the contrary, for reasons that are not wholly clear even today, the demonstration by Avery, MacLeoct, ancT McCarty that deoxyribonucleic acid is the stuff that genes are made of was slow to receive general acceptance and has never really been saluted in appropriately formal fashion. The event was originally recorcled in the now famous paper of 1944 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, entitled: "Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types.
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From page 184... ...
In his early chil(lhoo(l, he moved with his family back and forth across Canada from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan to Quebec. He obviously was a splendid student, for, as related by his sister, Miss Margaret MacLeod, he skipped the third, fifth, and seventh grades and graduated from secondary school (St.
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From page 185... ...
In 1934, at the age of twenty-four, after two years of residency training at the Montreal General Hospital, he came to New York. Less than ten years later, he would make his own highly important individual contribution to the Avery- MacLeocl- McCarty study.
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From page 186... ...
Several years later, when ~~ 1_ 7 _1 , , ~ . ~ ~ , ~rlrIlln aemonslra~ecl Nat one pneumococcus type could be transformed in vivo into another, in effect a directed and heritable alteration, Dawson was captivated by the feat.
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From page 187... ...
The critical substance could then be fully characterized in chemical terms. The subsequent phase of the study, the actual conduct of these chemical studies, became the responsibility of McCarty.
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From page 188... ...
, the paper was submitted to the Journal of Experimental Medicine. A In subsequent years, MacLeod continued to work on this problem in his laboratory at New York University, first with M
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From page 189... ...
. 189 mental decisions of presumed experts, but the scientific community and the public are protected against prolonged error by the competitive nature of the studies in a particular field.
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From page 190... ...
Lederberg also credits this attribute, which he terms "Avery's own a-theoreticism," with helping to postpone "the conceptual synthesis that now identifies 'gene' with DNA fragment."20 Whether or not acceptance was slow, it evolved steadily. For Lederberg also mentions: "In 1946, at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium, where Tatum and I first reported on recombination in Escherichia coli, we were incessantly challenged with the possibility that this was another example of transformation, a la Griffith and Avery."2i Dubos cites a summary by Andre Ewoff of a 1948 conference in Paris in which the genetic role of the nucleic acids is obviously accepted.
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From page 191... ...
In reality, the interpretation of this wonderful experiment was just as questionable on technical grounds as was the chemical interpretation of pneumococcal transformation, but those obtained by Avery 10 years before, that the few remaining skeptics were convinced. The case for the view that DNA iS the essential and sufficient substance capable of inducing genetic transformations in bacteria was not won by a single, absolute demonstration, but by two independent lines of evidenced In his Nobel Prize lecture,23 Lederberg puts it in essentially the same way.
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From page 192... ...
Second, virtually all were concerned with pneumonia, notably pneumococcal pneumonia; there was one stucly on the so-called primary atypical pneumonias just then coming into medical recognition. Given Avery's preoccupation with pneumococcus, the fact that MacLeocI, working in his laboratory, publishecl a number of studies on pneumonia may not seem too surprising.
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From page 193... ...
In part this was because a great deal of MacLeod's and the department's considerable contribution to the war effort came not from quick ad hoc laboratory experiments but from their ability to use a deep background in microbiology to advise and to help solve the disease problems of the military, which could arise virtually overnight. With these concepts in mind, starting with the nucleus of microbiologists in the department when he arrived in wartime, and more rapidly thereafter, there assembled at NYU a group that brought the department recognition as one in a rapid growth phase characteristic of a basic discipline.
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From page 194... ...
MacLeoc! had long been a stuclent of this disease complex, and the departmental publications list shows a 1943 papery by him on the newly recognized primary atypical pneumonia, a disease of consiclerable importance to the military.
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From page 195... ...
MacLeod was a senior author of the 1945 paper "Prevention of Pneumococcal Pneumonia by Immunization with Specific Capsular Polysaccharides."29 Mothballec! at war's end, largely because of the development of penicillin, this work formed the base three decades later for the antipneumococcal vaccine developed and clinically validated by R
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From page 196... ...
A vaccine consisting of the specific capsular polysaccharides of four pneumococcus types was macle and proved effective in the preven
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From page 197... ...
It was an achievement widely scrutinized and praised on the national scene; it was also one that inevitably caused a change in the nature of his own work in science.
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From page 198... ...
President Theodore Roosevelt obtainecl advice from medical leaders in New York City on whether to support Walter Reed when he became engaged in controversy cluring the construction of the Panama Canal. The National Academy of Sciences itself had, in its 1863
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From page 199... ...
In a very real sense, MacLeoct was a pioneer in an activity now ctignifiect in increasing numbers by a formal place in the university structure as a department or program entitIect Science and Society or Science anct Public Policy. With his terrific energy, he was not an occasional contributor to this scene he workocI at it virtually every clay.
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From page 200... ...
If the situation called for it, MacLeod would suffer fools gladly he would not cause people to lose face. Like a skilled symphony conductor, he always seemed to know just what it was his committee members did know; he would extract it and weave it into the fabric of a group contribution.
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From page 201... ...
hoIcT forth eloquently on such new clevelopments as a member of an informal monthly dinner club formed soon after WorIcl War }~.37
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From page 202... ...
They were: the War Department, later the Department of Defense; the National Institutes of Health; the President's Science Advisory Committee; and the National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected in 1955. In the early days of the war, a major part of his work had to do with the Army Epidemiological BoarcI, which was attached to the Office of the Surgeon General of the War Department.
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From page 203... ...
Although formally separate, the two operated as one, even to the point of having an identical membership anct chairmen for their committees. Despite his heavy commitments to the Army Epidemiological Board, MacLeod also worked hard in the OSRD-NRC programs, where he was chief of the Preventive Medicine Section of the Committee on Medical Research of the OSRD.
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From page 204... ...
training grant committees, and as a frequent informal personal consultant to successive directors, he exerted a considerable influence in helping to shape the direction and quality of what became the quite extraordinary clevelopment, the whole extramural complex of programs conclucted largely in .
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From page 205... ...
Nevertheless, he was able to make a number of achievements in the biomeclical field. Among these were: the in-depth report on the status and suggested future of the life sciences; the Task Force report on medical manpower; a report on the use of pesticides; and the U.S./Japan Cooperative Program in the Medical Sciences.
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From page 206... ...
Incleed, early in 1956, he was one of a group of four scientists to visit the U.S.S.R. These individuals probably represented the first official biomeclical group to visit the Soviet Union since the end of World War lI; indeed, there had not been many unofficial visits in the entire Stalin era.
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From page 207... ...
The wisdom of the initial choice of cholera for the major research effort was borne out, not only by the successful clevelopment of oral hydration as a treatment for cholera but also by its potentially great usefulness in the treatment of other diarrhea! diseases.39 The laboratory has now become the International Center for the Study of Diarrheal Diseases.
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From page 208... ...
Although he tract gone to Oklahoma less than two years before his cleath, he tract macle an impact there with his great ability to help young people facing the problems of scientific research. His major achievements in this final period tract to do with his foundation work, which was largely concerned with helping to strengthen the teaching and research capability of biomectical institutions.
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From page 209... ...
Probably the most carefully written of his analytic essays on the social choices before us regarding the support of medical education and its sciences is "The Government ancT the University," given as the ctinner address in 1966 before the Association of American Physicians.40 These three different phases of MacLeocT's scientific and professional life were largely sequential. There was his fine work in the laboratory culminating in the sharply focused scientific effort with Avery ancT McCarty that led to the iclentification of DNA as the material of heredity.
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From page 210... ...
in the need to work out ways to apply its useful products, he was equally deeply convinced of the importance of scientific inquiry of a completely unfettered sort. Even in his manner there were the contradictions his small size, quick movements, and careful grooming might easily get the label of dapper but not in him.
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From page 211... ...
of MacLeocT. Although he wouicT not talk of himself in a personal factual sense, he would get into quite serious discussions about his philosophical beliefs.
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From page 212... ...
MacLeod, and M McCarty, "Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumosocial Types,"Journal of Experimental Medicine, 79(1944)
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From page 213... ...
G Bernhard, "Prevention of Pneumococcal Pneumonia by Immunization with Specific Capsular Polysaccharides,"Journal of Experimental Medicine, 82(1945)
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From page 214... ...
M DiLapi, "The Human Antibody Response to Simultaneous Injection of 6 Specific Polysaccharides of Pneumococcus," journal of Experimental Medicine, 88(1948)
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From page 215... ...
Use of skin test with typespecific polysaccharides in control of serum dosage in pneumococcal pneumonia.
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From page 216... ...
44:447. 1944 Primary atypical pneumonia, etiology unknown; report on cultures of hemophilic organisms sent from Camp Clarborne.
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From page 217... ...
DiLapi. Human antibody response to simultaneous injection of 6 specific polysaccharides of pneumonococcus.
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From page 218... ...
Transformation reactions with two non-allelic R mutants of the same strain of pneumococcus type VIII.
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From page 219... ...
USA, 50:417. 1969 Prevention of pneumococcal pneumonia by immunization with specific capsular polysaccharides.
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