John Cairns (molecular biologist)

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Hugh John Forster Cairns (born November 21, 1922 in Oxford - † November 12, 2018 ) was a British physician, virologist and molecular biologist . He also published about cancer.

Cairns studied medicine at Oxford University (Bachelor 1943, PhD 1952) and then worked as a virologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne , at the Virus Research Institute in Entebbe and at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University . In 1960/61 he was a visiting scientist at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory , of which he was director from 1963 to 1968. From 1968 he was at the State University of New York . In 1970 he moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London and in 1972 he became director of the Mill Hill Laboratory of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Oxford . In 1982 he went back to the USA as a professor at Harvard University (Harvard School of Public Health). In 1991 he retired.

In 1952 he discovered that the flu virus, in contrast to bacteriophages, was only produced slowly in the host cell. In 1959 he and A. Gemmell succeeded in creating the first gene map of a virus (the rabbit smallpox virus).

In 1963 he discovered, using autoradiography on E. coli bacteria, that the DNA of the genome is in the form of circular plasmids and that DNA replication in the bacterium takes place at a certain moving point, and it was later discovered that this replication actually occurs occurs in two moving places and advances in opposite directions. He was also involved in cancer research and published an influential Scientific American article in 1985, in which he stated that, with the exception of a few rare cancers, chemotherapy did little to improve the chances of survival in common cancers.

Memberships and honors

In 1967 Cairns was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1974 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1981 MacArthur Fellow . In 1978 he received the Leeuwenhoek Medal from the Royal Society.

Fonts

  • John Cairns: Cancer: Science and Society . Freeman, San Francisco, Calif. 1978, ISBN 0-7167-0098-0 .
  • Matters of Life and Death: Perspectives on Public Health, Molecular Biology, Cancer, and the Prospects for the Human Race, Princeton University Press 1997
  • with James D. Watson , Gunther Stent (Ed.): Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1992.
  • Fighting Cancer , Spectrum of Science, January 1986
  • The historical development of mortality , Mannheimer Forum 85/86

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Cairns (1922-2018). (PDF) In: iarc.fr. November 15, 2018, accessed November 28, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Cairns, Edney, Fazekas de St. Groth Quantitative aspects of influenza virus multiplication , J. Immunol., Volume 69, 1952, pp. 155-181
  3. ↑ Gemmell, Cairns Linkage in the genome of an animal virus , Virology, Volume 8, 1959, pp. 381-383
  4. ↑ Others showed that viruses and phages at about the same time. See William C. Summers: Reticulate Evolution . Ed .: Nathalie Gontier (=  Interdisciplinary Evolution Research . Volume 3 ). Springer International Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-3-319-16344-4 , Chapter 6: Plasmids: Histories of a Concept , p. 179-190 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-319-16345-1_6 .
  5. ↑ Cairns The bacterial chromosome and its manner of replication as seen by autoradiography , J. Molecular Biology, Volume 6, 1963, p. 208, description in Science Citation Classics, pdf
  6. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 2, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Cairns, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cairns, Hugh John Forster (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British medic and molecular biologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Oxford
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 2018