Kary Mullis and pcr

  Kary Banks Mullis (born December 28, 1944) is a Nobel Prize winning American biochemist, author, and lecturer. In recognition of his improvement of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and earned the Japan Prize in the same year. The process was first described by Kjell Kleppe and 1968 Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana, and allows the amplification of specific DNA sequences.[1] The improvements made by Mullis allowed PCR to become a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before P.C.R. and after P.C.R."[2]

  Mullis has been criticized for promoting pseudoscientific notions in areas he has no expertise, promoting AIDS denialism, Climate change denial and his belief in astrology.
Early life and education
  Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains,[3] on December 28, 1944. His family had a background in farming in this rural area. As a child, Mullis recalls, he was interested in observing biological organisms in the countryside.[1] He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina,[1] where he attended Dreher High School.

  Mullis earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry[3] from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he got married and started a business.[4] He then received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972; his research focused on synthesis and structure of proteins.[1] Following his graduation, Mullis became a postdoctoral fellow in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical School, going on to complete two years of postdoctoral work in pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

 Career
After receiving his PhD, Mullis left science to write fiction, but quit and became a biochemist at a medical school in Kansas City.[4] He then managed a bakery for two years.[2] Mullis returned to science at the encouragement of friend Thomas White, who later got Mullis a job with the biotechnology company Cetus Corporation of Emeryville, California.[1][2] Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis invented his prize-winning improvements to the polymerase chain reaction.[5] After leaving Cetus in 1986, Mullis served as director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc. in San Diego for two years. Mullis has consulted on nucleic acid chemistry for multiple corporations.[2]

In 1992, Mullis founded a business with the intent to sell pieces of jewelry containing the amplified DNA of deceased famous people like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.[6][7] Mullis is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.[8]

 PCR and other inventions
Main articles: Taq Polymerase and History of polymerase chain reaction
In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corp. as a chemist.[4] That spring, according to Mullis, he was driving his vehicle late one night with his girlfriend, who was also a chemist at Cetus, when he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase, a technique which would allow a small strand of DNA to be copied almost an infinite number of times.[4] Cetus took Mullis off his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time,[4] and Mullis spent more than a year trying to show his idea would work, but could not produce "definitive proof" of the concept. Mullis eventually succeeded on December 16, 1983.[4] In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the success didn't make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him shortly before: "I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither [assistant] Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome."[4] He received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention.[4]

Other Cetus scientists, including Randall Saiki and Henry Erlich, were placed on PCR projects to work on developing AIDS and other tests utilizing PCR. Saiki generated the needed data within months and authored the first paper on the improved technique,[2] while Mullis was still working on his paper that would describe PCR itself.[4]

A further complication was that the DNA polymerase was destroyed by the high heat used at the start of each replication cycle and had to be replaced. In 1986, Mullis started to use Thermophilus aquaticus (Taq) DNA polymerase to amplify segments of DNA. The Taq polymerase was heat resistant and would only need to be added once, thus making the technique dramatically more affordable and subject to automation. This has created revolutions in biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine and forensics.

Mullis has also invented a UV-sensitive plastic that changes color in response to light, and most recently has been working on an approach for mobilizing the immune system to neutralize invading pathogens and toxins, leading to the formation of his current venture, Altermune LLC. Mullis described this idea this way:

It is a method using specific synthetic chemical linkers to divert an immune response from its nominal target to something completely different which you would right now like to be temporarily immune to. Let's say you just got exposed to a new strain of the flu. You're already immune to alpha-1,3-galactosyl-galactose bonds. All humans are. Why not divert a fraction of those antibodies to the influenza strain you just picked up? A chemical linker synthesized with an alpha-1,3-gal-gal bond on one end and a DNA aptamer devised to bind specifically to the strain of influenza you have on the other end will link anti-alpha-Gal antibodies to the influenza virus and presto!--you have fooled your immune system into attacking the new virus.[3][9]

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