40 Years of Discovery

Abstract

History is most interesting when seen through the eyes of those who lived it. In this 40th anniversary retrospective of bioscience research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we've asked 19 scientists to share their personal recollections about a major accomplishment in the program's history. We have not tried to create a comprehensive or seamless story. Rather, we've attempted to capture the perspectives of key individuals, each of whom worked on a research program that met significant milestones. We have focused particularly on programs and accomplishments that have shaped the current Biology and Biotechnology Research Program (BBRP). In addition, we have included a timeline of biosciences at LLNL, a history of the directorate that appeared in the Laboratory's magazine, ''Science & Technology Review'', in 2002, and a list of bioscience-related articles that have appeared over the years in ''Science & Technology Review and its predecessor, Energy & Technology Review''. The landscape of biological science today is stunningly different from 40 years ago. When LLNL bioscience began in 1963, we knew about the structure of DNA and that it was the carrier of genetic information. However, it would be another year before scientists would understand how DNA codes for the production ofmore » proteins and more than a decade before the earliest DNA sequence would be known. It is sometimes difficult to remember that it was only 15 years ago that the polymerase chain reaction, a synthetic method to amplify pieces of DNA was developed, and that only within the last half-dozen years has sequence data for entire organisms begun to be available. In this publication, we have tried to capture some of the landmark and seminal research history: radiation effects studies, which were a major reason for founding the biological research program, and flow sorting and chromosome painting, which dramatically changed our ability to study DNA damage and enabled the creation of chromosome-specific clone libraries, a key step toward sequencing the human genome. Several histories relate to the Human Genome Project itself and surrounding technologies, and several to long-standing research themes such as DNA repair, food mutagens, and reproductive biology. Others describe more recent developments such as computational biology, health-care technologies, and biodefense research.« less