7 ms·

DNA genius and double Nobel Prize winner Fred Sanger dies aged 95

134 points by yread 13y ago

spodek 13y ago
According to Wikipedia, 835 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. Four people have won two awards. Winning a first prize is huge. Something like one in ten million people get one. But apparently winning a second one is easy -- better than one in a thousand get them. The Curie family has six! (I hope that came out slightly funny and informative)
- dnautics 13y ago
  what is interesting is for the most part his first sequencing (protein sequencing) was made obsolete by his second sequencing (DNA sequencing).
- rangibaby 13y ago
  The entire European Union got one too :-P
  - kitd 13y ago
    Yeah, I'm still waiting for my 42 1/2 p
- gilgoomesh 13y ago
  Here's a tip: win the second one first, then work your way backwards to the first one.
  - verandaguy 13y ago
    Computer scientists - who, of course, have a more thorough understanding of recursion - should have little trouble with this.
    - nmc 13y ago
      Sadly, no Nobel Prize rewards computer scientists. You could check if the same statistical fact can be established for the Turing medal.
- sakunthala 13y ago
  Given that you're a doctor, I think the odds are on the order of around 1/3000 of winning the Nobel for medicine. So maybe that statistic doesn't say much for two-time winners!
- hga 13y ago
  I don't count Linus Pauling in the same company as the other three. While he was the 20th Century's premier chemist, by being both absolutely brilliant, and getting his Ph.D. at just the right time to be the first to apply the then new and not yet completed quantum mechanics to chemistry, his second was the notoriously political Peace Prize, and he got that for being a prominent politically correct scientist at the right time.
arethuza 13y ago
Some great stuff on his Wikipedia page: - "struggled with physics and mathematics" :-) - "He agreed to having the Centre named after him when asked by John Sulston, the founding director, but warned, 'It had better be good.'" - "My father was a committed Quaker and I was brought up as a Quaker, and for them truth is very important. I drifted away from those beliefs - one is obviously looking for truth but one needs some evidence for it. Even if I wanted to believe in God I would find it very difficult. I would need to see proof." - 'He declined the offer of a knighthood as he did not wish to be addressed as "Sir"' - "the most self-effacing person you could hope to meet" I hope someone writes a good biography of him - I wonder if Andrew Hodges (who wrote 'Alan Turing: The Enigma') could be persuaded.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger
jballanc 13y ago
The early pioneers in genetics were all consummate hackers in the truest sense. For much of the work they were doing, the had very little information about the underlying processes to go on. The were, in effect, reverse engineering life. It's also worth noting that Sanger's sequencing method, or variations on it, were still used decades later to produce the bulk of the human genome sequence. Only very recently have newer, faster, alternative methods been developed. Even so, Sanger sequencing is still used for smaller scale studies, and is simple enough that almost any modern biology lab can do it on their own (all you need is a thermocycler, some eppindorfs, a sequencing gel apparatus, some photographic film, and all the raw chemicals).
- dnautics 13y ago
  although you're better off doing sanger by contract. Sanger sequencing costs about $3 a run for really reliable sequencing. Contemporary sanger will likely never be obsolete because for short runs ~1kb where you need to be ~100% sure there are no mistakes, the method is really unbeatable.
- drcode 13y ago
  > All you need is a thermocycler, some eppindorfs, a sequencing gel apparatus, some photographic film, and all the raw chemicals. And brutal amounts of tedious, flawless precision (I have tremendous respect for people who can do this stuff...)
  - jballanc 13y ago
    ...also known as graduate school. ;-) Seriously, though, my wife used to work with alternative RNA bases. Localizing them to specific sequences required the most massive sequencing gels I've seen (at least 1m tall), and every surface in the lab had to be continually rinsed with dilute acid. It turns out, human skin contains bucket-loads of non-specific RNAses. Not a problem for most people who work with DNA, but can absolutely ruin a week or more's worth of work if you're in an RNA lab.
    - dekhn 13y ago
w1ntermute 13y ago
For everyone reading this: if you are tired of making websites and iPhone apps for people to share their cat photos, and want to do something more consequential, consider going into computational genomics. Although Sanger sequencing was/still is used sometimes, the "next-gen" sequencing methods that have become centrally important over the last decade generate massive amounts of data that require a lot of computational analysis, something that most scientists in the field could use assistance with.
- thearn4 13y ago
  It is kind of a sad commentary on the state of things when so many of the brightest and creative minds of a generation are squandering the most productive years of their life writing software to enhance marketing and targeted advertising. And that these are efforts valued on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars.
  - dekhn 13y ago
    And yet, by doing so, large piles of rational cash can be allocated to scientific research. See, for example, Gates Foundation, Rockefellar Foundation, Calico, etc.
  - kamjam 13y ago
    I'm getting a lot of this feeling these days. This is an interesting post by the OP. I am going to investigate this more, it might up some avenues to explore further.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    the false assumption is that all effort in the sciences is not similarly squandered. I assure you, most of it is. At least when you're making a better platform for cat pictures, you are presumably giving someone what they want and making their life marignally lighter. So much science is basically just politically connected higher ups getting money thrown at them for pursuits that if you stopped and thought about you would realize they were not.even.worth.it, or, being chased after by the wrong researcher. And in the process, the poor grad student (or postdoc) is having the best years of their life ground down. In 97% of cases, I'd say the cat pictures are of better social benefit.
oleganza 13y ago
How come he is a DNA genius if he couldn't find an anti-age solution?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - oleganza 13y ago
    As usual, irony is not one of the HN's strongest properties.
amiramir 13y ago
Many years after he'd left, I went to the same "high school" as Fred Sanger. Our biology/science building was named after him. He visited the school every so often and was a very modest and entertaining man. You can get a tiny sense of him from this short video: https://www.bryanston.co.uk/podium/default.aspx?t=52562&a=47671&play=1&rc=1 https://www.bryanston.co.uk/podium/default.aspx?t=52562&a=47...

134 points by yread 13y ago

According to Wikipedia, 835 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. Four people have won two awards. Winning a first prize is huge. Something like one in ten million people get one. But apparently winning a second one is easy -- better than one in a thousand get them. The Curie family has six! (I hope that came out slightly funny and informative)

dnautics 13y ago
what is interesting is for the most part his first sequencing (protein sequencing) was made obsolete by his second sequencing (DNA sequencing).
rangibaby 13y ago
The entire European Union got one too :-P
- kitd 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm still waiting for my 42 1/2 p
gilgoomesh 13y ago
Here's a tip: win the second one first, then work your way backwards to the first one.
- verandaguy 13y ago
  Computer scientists - who, of course, have a more thorough understanding of recursion - should have little trouble with this.
  - nmc 13y ago
    Sadly, no Nobel Prize rewards computer scientists. You could check if the same statistical fact can be established for the Turing medal.
sakunthala 13y ago
Given that you're a doctor, I think the odds are on the order of around 1/3000 of winning the Nobel for medicine. So maybe that statistic doesn't say much for two-time winners!
hga 13y ago
I don't count Linus Pauling in the same company as the other three. While he was the 20th Century's premier chemist, by being both absolutely brilliant, and getting his Ph.D. at just the right time to be the first to apply the then new and not yet completed quantum mechanics to chemistry, his second was the notoriously political Peace Prize, and he got that for being a prominent politically correct scientist at the right time.

arethuza 13y ago

Some great stuff on his Wikipedia page: - "struggled with physics and mathematics" :-) - "He agreed to having the Centre named after him when asked by John Sulston, the founding director, but warned, 'It had better be good.'" - "My father was a committed Quaker and I was brought up as a Quaker, and for them truth is very important. I drifted away from those beliefs - one is obviously looking for truth but one needs some evidence for it. Even if I wanted to believe in God I would find it very difficult. I would need to see proof." - 'He declined the offer of a knighthood as he did not wish to be addressed as "Sir"' - "the most self-effacing person you could hope to meet" I hope someone writes a good biography of him - I wonder if Andrew Hodges (who wrote 'Alan Turing: The Enigma') could be persuaded.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger

jballanc 13y ago

The early pioneers in genetics were all consummate hackers in the truest sense. For much of the work they were doing, the had very little information about the underlying processes to go on. The were, in effect, reverse engineering life. It's also worth noting that Sanger's sequencing method, or variations on it, were still used decades later to produce the bulk of the human genome sequence. Only very recently have newer, faster, alternative methods been developed. Even so, Sanger sequencing is still used for smaller scale studies, and is simple enough that almost any modern biology lab can do it on their own (all you need is a thermocycler, some eppindorfs, a sequencing gel apparatus, some photographic film, and all the raw chemicals).

dnautics 13y ago
although you're better off doing sanger by contract. Sanger sequencing costs about $3 a run for really reliable sequencing. Contemporary sanger will likely never be obsolete because for short runs ~1kb where you need to be ~100% sure there are no mistakes, the method is really unbeatable.
drcode 13y ago
> All you need is a thermocycler, some eppindorfs, a sequencing gel apparatus, some photographic film, and all the raw chemicals. And brutal amounts of tedious, flawless precision (I have tremendous respect for people who can do this stuff...)
- jballanc 13y ago
  ...also known as graduate school. ;-) Seriously, though, my wife used to work with alternative RNA bases. Localizing them to specific sequences required the most massive sequencing gels I've seen (at least 1m tall), and every surface in the lab had to be continually rinsed with dilute acid. It turns out, human skin contains bucket-loads of non-specific RNAses. Not a problem for most people who work with DNA, but can absolutely ruin a week or more's worth of work if you're in an RNA lab.
  - dekhn 13y ago

w1ntermute 13y ago

For everyone reading this: if you are tired of making websites and iPhone apps for people to share their cat photos, and want to do something more consequential, consider going into computational genomics. Although Sanger sequencing was/still is used sometimes, the "next-gen" sequencing methods that have become centrally important over the last decade generate massive amounts of data that require a lot of computational analysis, something that most scientists in the field could use assistance with.

thearn4 13y ago
It is kind of a sad commentary on the state of things when so many of the brightest and creative minds of a generation are squandering the most productive years of their life writing software to enhance marketing and targeted advertising. And that these are efforts valued on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars.
- dekhn 13y ago
  And yet, by doing so, large piles of rational cash can be allocated to scientific research. See, for example, Gates Foundation, Rockefellar Foundation, Calico, etc.
- kamjam 13y ago
  I'm getting a lot of this feeling these days. This is an interesting post by the OP. I am going to investigate this more, it might up some avenues to explore further.
- dnautics 13y ago
  the false assumption is that all effort in the sciences is not similarly squandered. I assure you, most of it is. At least when you're making a better platform for cat pictures, you are presumably giving someone what they want and making their life marignally lighter. So much science is basically just politically connected higher ups getting money thrown at them for pursuits that if you stopped and thought about you would realize they were not.even.worth.it, or, being chased after by the wrong researcher. And in the process, the poor grad student (or postdoc) is having the best years of their life ground down. In 97% of cases, I'd say the cat pictures are of better social benefit.

oleganza 13y ago

How come he is a DNA genius if he couldn't find an anti-age solution?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- oleganza 13y ago
  As usual, irony is not one of the HN's strongest properties.

amiramir 13y ago

Many years after he'd left, I went to the same "high school" as Fred Sanger. Our biology/science building was named after him. He visited the school every so often and was a very modest and entertaining man. You can get a tiny sense of him from this short video: https://www.bryanston.co.uk/podium/default.aspx?t=52562&a=47671&play=1&rc=1 https://www.bryanston.co.uk/podium/default.aspx?t=52562&a=47...