Talk:Sydney Brenner

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[edit] SYDNEY BRENNER'S TALK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE ON MAY 1ST 2006

I had the pleasure of listening to him for the best part of two hours in the Department of Chemistry to an audience mainly comprising student members of the Cambridge Biological Society and the Cambridge Scientific Society; his lecture was a tour de force and his lecturing style reminded me of the late Dr. Jacob Bronowski (from "The Ascent of Man" BBC TV series). For someone who will be 80 next January [2007) it was a remarkable performance, and he took a lot of questions afterwards. I recommend his book "A Life in Science" for anyone not present!

See: * http://www.bluesci.org/content/view/436/265/ for a report on his talk on 1st of May 2006.

62.25.109.194 mp62.25.109.194

Incidentally, I have no strong objection to what used to be the first sentence in this biography, as the subject uses it himself in some self-descriptions. Still, the criterion of relevance is not necessarily fulfilled, and it is simplest to be consistent. Bellbird 16:12, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

If the person is Jewish and identifies himself as Jewish, it would be wrong for Wikipedia to deny it. Applying subjective criteria of relevance violates WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.--Newport 12:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] mRNA and triplet nature.

Made a few changes to the page.

1. An important point missing from the article was a mention of Brenner's contribution identification of the messenger-RNA which happened in a well-documented discussion between Francis Crick, Francois Jacob, and others. Brenner connected data from the experiments of Volkin and Astrachan, and Jacob and Monod and differentiated the 'messenger' RNA from the 'ribosomal' RNA. They also designed an experiment during and after that discussion which was conducted at Caltech in the next summer and provided conclusive evidence for the messenger nature of this RNA, though the RNA itself was first detected by Volkin and Astrachan. This story is well documented in Horace Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation, as well as in the autobiographies of Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner, and Francois Jacob.

2. The experiment by Crick, Barnett, Brenner and Watts-Tobin which is referred to in this article as contributing to eluciditing the genetic code. An important thing to realise is that the experiment did not, per-se, elucidate any part of the code (an amino-acid nucleotide relationship). Instead, it proved that the genetic code must be triplet, or a multiple of that. This gave information about the nature of the code, rather than eluciditing the code itself. The first elucidation of the code actually happened almost simultaneously, with Marshall Nirenberg demonstrating cell-free translation of poly-U gives poly-phenylalanine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Apaxon (talk • contribs) 10:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Esther Lederberg

I removed the reference to the purported friendship between Brenner and Esther Lederberg. I did this because a) the only support given in favour of this fact was their both being in the photograph which at the time of editing remains on the page. It oughtn't need to be stated that one person's being in the same photograph as another does not establish that they are friends; and b) whether or not it is true that they were friends, I think the burden of proof lies upon Shadow600 to show that that fact is of sufficient significance to merit being mentioned in a brief summary of Brenner's life. (I emphasise that the burden of proof falls upon Shadow600 particularly in the light of the discussion at [1]). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morningoil (talk • contribs) 13:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)