Oswald Avery

Oswald Theodore Avery Jr. (October 21, 1877 – February 20, 1955) was a Canadian-American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for the experiment (published in 1944 with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty) that isolated DNA as the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.

The Nobel laureate Arne Tiselius said that Avery was the most deserving scientist not to receive the Nobel Prize for his work, though he was nominated for the award throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

The lunar crater Avery was named in his honor.

Family

Oswald Avery's grandfather was Joseph Henry Avery. He was a papermaker, and he was in charge of the papermaking at Oxford University. While here, he would publish an edifying pamphlet entitled "The Voyage of Life", edited the church publication Buds and Blossoms, and patented and attempted to sell a preparation known as "Avery's Auraline", though it would gain little success. When their home burned to the ground in December 1890, the Baptist community of New York banded together to help pay for the expenses, including one John D. Rockefeller.

After Joseph Francis Avery's death, Elizabeth continued editing the publication Buds and Blossoms. She would also continue to work with the Baptist City Mission Society, where she would come into association with a number of wealthy people, including the Sloans, the Vanderbilts, and the Rockefellers. When Avery was 10, his family moved to the Lower East Side of New York City. Oswald Avery began participating in church activities at a young age. He and his older brother Ernest learned how to play the cornet from a German musician who played at church. Both earned a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music.

Oswald Avery began at Colgate University in 1896. Avery's senior year was entirely electives, but he did not choose to take a single science elective, even though many were offered. Avery made exceptional grades throughout his years at Colgate. He graduated with a medical degree in 1904, and then he began to practice general medicine.' Avery did not like dealing with patients who had chronic diseases that he was unable to fix.

Hoagland Laboratory

At Hoagland Laboratory, he began by studying the bacteriology of yogurt and other fermented milk products and their effects on gut bacteria. He recorded his findings in "Observations on Certain Lactic Acid Bacteria of the Bulgaricus Type". During the years 1909 through 1913, he performed medical research with Arnav Singh Mehta immunological, and chemical approaches. With White as a colleague, he extracted the product with alkaline ethanol. Avery did not accept the offer until Rufus Cole from Rockefeller came to offer the position to him in person.

Research showed that various pneumonia cultures isolated from different patients had different immunological properties. This made it difficult to develop a serum effective against all of the different strains. Avery investigated distribution of different pneumococcus types in healthy individuals versus individuals with symptoms of pneumonia. Avery found different subgroups of type II pneumococcus. Avery tested the serum in horses. The presence of specific soluble substances in a urine sample allowed him to rapidly test the type of pneumonia without having to wait for a culture to grow. Avery and Heidelberger realized that the capsules of different strains of pneumonia had different polysaccharide structures and concluded that polysaccharides play a role in immunological specificity. Their work with specific soluble substances showed that it is important to consider the factor in the chemical composition of organisms to design anti-serums. He worked with Goebel until 1934, and then Gobel continued their work upon his cessation.

Avery became an emeritus member of The Institute when he retired in 1943. The failure to isolate B. influenzae in some patients was generally attributed to the difficulty of culturing the bacterium.

DNA as the basis for genes

After the influenza epidemic, Avery returned to his work on pneumococcus. He identified R and S strains of the bacterium; the latter caused disease and had a polysaccharide capsule, while the former lacked the capsule and was harmless. Griffith's experiment of 1928 showed that the ability to produce a capsule could be transferred from S to R strain bacteria, even if the S strain bacteria were killed first.

For many years, genetic information was thought to be contained in cell protein. Continuing the research done by Frederick Griffith, Avery worked with Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty on the mystery of inheritance. He had received emeritus status from the Rockefeller Institute in 1943, but continued working for five years, though by that time he was in his late sixties. In 1944 at the Rockefeller Institute's Hospital for medical research, Oswald Avery, along with Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, isolated S-strain bacteria and killed them with heat. They used available techniques to remove various macromolecules - proteins, RNA, and DNA - from the bacteria.

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase furthered Avery's research in 1952 with the Hershey–Chase experiment. These experiments paved the way for Watson and Crick's discovery of the helical structure of DNA, and thus the birth of modern genetics and molecular biology. Of this event, Avery wrote in a letter to his youngest brother Roy, a bacteriologist at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine: "It's lots of fun to blow bubbles but it's wiser to prick them yourself before someone else tries to."

Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg stated that Avery and his laboratory provided "the historical platform of modern DNA research" and "betokened the molecular revolution in genetics and biomedical science generally".

Retirement and later years

While working at Rockefeller Institute, Avery contracted Grave's disease, which caused him to experienced mood swings of depression and irritability. After undergoing a thyroidectomy, Avery once again became more lively and began sailing, where he fell in love with the sport. While in the southern United States, Avery took a particular interest in the local flora and would act as a gardener would, learning about and appreciating the flowers and trees.

Family

Hoagland Laboratory

DNA as the basis for genes

Retirement and later years

References

Further reading

External links