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Sydney Brenner - A completely interlocking theory (111/236)

234 views · Published 4 July 2017 · 1:26 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of Sydney Brenner’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf13v0OEdt8&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyxf1sRqxZgh-06WFw4zgPj

South African Sydney Brenner (1927-2019), who jointly discovered messenger RNA, was a pioneer in the field of genetics and molecular biology. He was one of three co-recipients of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. [Listener: Lewis Wolpert; date recorded: 1994]

TRANSCRIPT: It was the real house of cards theory; you had to buy everything – that is, you couldn't take one fact and let it stand on itself and say the rest could go. Everything was so interlocked. You had to buy the plus minuses, you had to buy the barriers, you had to buy the triplets phase, and all of those remained together. And it was the whole that explained the thing. And if you attacked any one part of it, the whole thing fell apart. So it was all or nothing theory; it was very interesting because of the coherent thing. And very hard to communicate to people who just thought, you know, this is just, it can't be done this way. However, I think that that is one of the most beautiful… I mean, aesthetically elegant experiences of my life, in which, just by doing these little operations, you land up with this detailed description of the molecular structure of living matter. And all of those things happening at the same time – this in 1960 to 1961.

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