キャリー・マリスの書き物は少ない。
The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction
という解説書がScientific american にあるのだがこれが９９ドルもする。
普通なら本人が書いた論文は投稿誌とは別にあるがマリス博士はそのサービス精神も内容だ。
google scholar でも見れない。
そこで思いついたのが論文を無料で読めるsci-hub だ。
ちょっと手間取ったが見つけた。これだ。
素晴らしい。
S ometimes a good idea comes to you when you are not looking for it. Through an improbable
combination of coincidences, naivete and lucky mistakes, such a revelation came to me one Friday night in April, 1983, as I gripped the steering wheel of my car and snaked along a moonlit mountain road into northern Califor nia's redwood country.That was how I stumbled across a process that could make unlimited numbers of copies of genes, a process now known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
Beginning with a single molecule of the genetic material DNA, the PCR can generate 100 billion similar molecules in an afternoon.The reaction is easy to execute: it requires no more than a test tube, a few simple reagents and a source of heat. The DNA sample that one wishes to copy can be pure, or it can be a minute part of an extremely complex mixture of biological materi als. The DNA may come from a hospi-
KARY B. MUlS describes himself as "a generalist with a chemical prejudice." In addition to the polymerase chain re action, he is also known for having in vented a plastic that changes color rap idly when exposed to ultraviolet light. While working as a biochemistry grad uate student at the University of Cali fornia, Berkeley, he published a paper in Nature entitled "The Cosmological Significance of Time Reversal." Mullis received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1972. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kansas Medi cal School and the University of Califor nia, San Francisco, Mullis joined the Ce tus Corporation, where he discovered the polymerase chain reaction. In 1986 he became the director of molecular biology at Xytronyx, Inc. Today Mullis works in La Jolla, Calif., as a private con sultant on polymerase-chain-reaction technology and nucleic acid chemistry.
by Kary B. Mullis
tal tissue specimen, from a single hu man hair, from a drop of dried blood at the scene of a crime, from the tis sues of a mummified brain or from a 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth fro zen in a glacier.
In the seven years since that night, applications for the PCR have spread throughout the biological sciences: more than 1,000 reports of its use have been published.Given the impact of the PCR on biological research and its conceptual Simplicity, the fact that it lay umecognized for more than 15 years after all the elements for its implementation were available strikes many observers as uncanny.