David Baltimore: The scientist who transformed biology and ushered in the biotech era
In September, David Baltimore — the scientist who discovered reverse transcriptase, a breakthrough often described as one of the most dramatic turning points in 20th-century biology — passed away. He was 87. Baltimore was a pioneer whose work has led to a paradigm shift in the life sciences. In 1953, Watson and Crick proposed the double-helix structure of DNA. Crick later articulated the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA to protein, naming it the “central dogma” of molecular biology. Popularized through Watson’s textbooks, the concept became a foundational tenet of the life sciences for decades. But in 1970, Howard Temin and David Baltimore discovered reverse transcriptase, demonstrating that RNA can be transcribed into DNA — a revelation that overturned the simplified, one-directional version of the dogma. Industrially, the enzyme proved transformative: By enabling the synthesis of cDNA from RNA templates, it became a key partner to recombinant DNA technology. It helped pave the way for the large-scale production of human therapeutic proteins in the 1980s. This marWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times
Quelle: Korea Times