RARE “Behavioral Genetics Pioneer”Seymour Benzer Hand Signed Announcement for Sale

RARE “Behavioral Genetics Pioneer”Seymour Benzer Hand Signed Announcement For Sale

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RARE “Behavioral Genetics Pioneer”Seymour Benzer Hand Signed Announcement:
$499.99

Up for sale a RARE! "Behavioral Genetics" Seymour Benzer Hand Signed Announcement Dated 1988.

– November 30, 2007) was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist. His

career began during the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s, and he

eventually rose to prominence in the fields of molecular and behavioral

genetics. He led a productive genetics research lab both at Purdue University

and as the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, Emeritus, at the California Institute of

Technology. Benzer was born in South Bronx, to Meyer B. and Eva

Naidorf, both Jews from Poland. He had two older sisters, and his parents

favored him as the only boy. One of Benzer's earliest scientific experiences

was dissecting frogs he had caught as a boy. In an interview at Caltech, Benzer

also remembered receiving a microscope for his 13th birthday, “and that opened

up the whole world.” The book "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis heavily influenced the young Benzer, and

he even imitated the handwriting of Max Gottlieb, a scientist character in the

novel. Benzer graduated from New Utrecht High School at

15 years old. In 1938 he enrolled at Brooklyn College where he majored in physics. Benzer then moved on to Purdue University to earn his Ph.D. in solid state

physics. While there he was recruited for a secret military project to develop

improved radar. He performed research that led to the development of

stable germanium rectifiers and discovered a germanium crystal

able to be used at high voltages, among the scientific work that led to the

first transistor. Upon receiving his Ph.D. in 1947, he was

immediately hired as an assistant professor in physics at Purdue. However,

Benzer was inspired by Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life?, in which the physicist pondered the

physical nature of the gene and a “code” of life. This catalyzed Benzer's shift

in interest to biology, and he moved into the area of bacteriophage genetics., spending two years as a postdoctoral fellow

in Max Delbrück's laboratory

at California Institute of Technology, and then returning to Purdue. At Purdue

University, Benzer developed the T4 rII system, a new genetic T4

bacteriophage rII mutants. After observing that a particular rII mutant,

a mutation that caused the bacteriophage to eliminate bacteria more rapidly

than usual, was not exhibiting the expected phenotype, it occurred to Benzer

that this strain might have come from a cross between two different rII mutants

(each having part of the rII gene intact) wherein a recombination event

resulted in a normal rII sequence. Benzer realized that by

generating many r mutants and recording the recombination one could create a detailed map of the

gene, much as Alfred Sturtevant had

done for chromosomes. Taking advantage of the

enormous number of recombinants that could be analyzed in the rII mutant

system, Benzer was eventually able to map over 2400 rII mutations.

The data he collected provided the first evidence that the gene is not an

indivisible entity, as previously believed, and that genes were linear. Benzer also proved that mutations were distributed in many different parts of a

single gene, and the resolving power of his system allowed him to discern

mutants that differ at the level of a single nucleotide. Based on his rII data, Benzer

also proposed distinct classes of mutations including deletions, point mutations, missense mutations,

and nonsense mutations. Benzer's

work influenced many other scientists of his time (see Phage group). In his molecular biology period, Benzer

dissected the fine structure of a single gene, laying down the ground work for

decades of mutation analysis and genetic engineering, and setting up a paradigm

using the rII phage that would later be used by Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner to establish the triplet code of DNA.

In addition, Benzer's mapping technique was taken up by Richard Feynman. In

1967, Benzer left the field of phage genetics and returned to the California

Institute of Technology to work in behavioral genetics.