The "Liposome" Letters

Abstract

There's so much going on in biology that a great deal escapes the notice of even the best-read science teacher. Not only does the information keep piling up, but the techniques available to researchers also multiply. Take, for example, liposomes and the techniques for making them. Until a few months ago, I was only vaguely aware of the existence of vesicles composed of lipid bilayers. Then I read essay on liposomes by Gerald Weissmann (1985) in his book, The Woods Hole Cantata. He describes how Alec Bangham taught him to make liposomes at Cambridge during a summer in the 1960s. Weissmann terms this experience an interlude of pure joy. If he could get that excited about little lipid spheres, I figured they might be worth a little investigation, the results of which follow. Weissmann gives a reference for a book edited by Bangham (1983) called Liposome Letters. This is a curious volume, very unlike the usual rather dry collection of research papers. It seems that Bangham was to retire on November 10, 1982. In anticipation of this date, he wrote to 50 scientists who were involved in liposome many of whom, like Weissman, had visited his lab. Since he felt that too much of our published scientific writing was stereotype, banal, platitudinous and devoid of all sensibility to the fabric of life in scientific research, he asked his correspondents to write him informal letter, a poem or a witty verse, anything they desired, @providing it was not libellous. He wanted them to describe anecdote, observation, hypothesis or comment about liposomes, these delightful little objects. A couple of researchers did contribute poems, though of doubtful literary value: