The Nobel chemist who tinkered with DNA

Stanford University biochemist Paul Berg opened the door to the world of genetic engineering, creating a technique that has led to high-yield crops and hundreds of drugs and therapies, including the Covid vaccine. It was 1971 when Berg cut the DNA of a monkey virus and inserted pieces into the bacterium E. coli to form the first recombinant DNA. That demonstration of the ability to transfer bits of genetic information from one organism to another inspired further experiments in biotech. It also sparked uproar over potential Frankencreatures, and

Berg was extremely cautious, pausing his rDNA experiments and inviting discussion. He didn’t do it for money; he never patented his techniques. Instead, his research, Berg said upon sharing the 1980 Nobel Prize, allowed him to experience “the indescribable exhilaration, the ultimate high, that accompanies discovery.”

Berg was born in New York City to poor Russian immigrants, said the Los Angeles Times. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Berg graduated from Penn State, then received a doctorate in biochemistry from what is now Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. He joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, where he worked under biochemist Arthur Kornberg, a 1959 Nobel winner, said The New York Times. That year, Kornberg decamped to Stanford to set up a new biochemistry department, and Berg went with him.

After his 1971 breakthrough, Berg was preparing to introduce rDNA into animal cells, said The Washington Post. But he realized that a lab leak of modified

E. coli, one of the world’s most common bacteria, could be catastrophic. So in 1975, he assembled a historic conference in Pacific Grove, Calif., of about 150 of the world’s top DNA researchers to craft a set of safety and ethics guidelines for genetic research. For decades afterward, Berg remained a fixture at Stanford, where he ran the new center for molecular and genetic medicine, encouraging debates on the dangers of technology while cautioning against overhyping that danger. In a 2001 interview with the Nobel committee, he recalled that recombinant DNA came close to being banned. “We would’ve lost the entire biotechnology revolution,” he said. “So we have to think very clearly before you pass laws that forbid scientific work.”