by King-Thom Chung, Department of Biology, The University of Memphis

"Our knowledge of living things at the molecular level has continued to increase exponentially. — Largely as a result of its advances, the opportunities and challenges have never been greater in the areas of biology. Nor have the intellectual rewards to those adequately prepared and sufficiently motivated."---------------------George W. Beadle (1903-1989)

George W. Beadle shared the Nobel Prize of Medicine and Physiology in 1958 with Joshua Lederberg (1925-) and Edward Lawrie Tatum (1909-1975). His work on Neurospora actually laid down the foundation for Lederberg’s later discovery. Now let us see the life experience of this pioneer, whose contribution to genetics has immensely affected the progress of biotechnology today.

George W. Beadle was born on October 22, 1903 on a farm near the small town of Wahoo, Nebraska. His father, Chauncy Elmer Beadle, was from Kendallville, Indiana and his mother, Hattie Albro, from Galva, Illinois. They owned and operated a 40-acre farm. George’s mother died when he was only four-and-a-half years old. George grew up with his older brother and a young sister. They were raised, as George said, by a series of housekeepers, some very good, some poor, and one or two terrible.

Because of the size of the farm, their farming was very diversified with field crops such as alfalfa, potatoes, corn, asparagus and strawberries, and cattle horses, hogs and chickens. Life in the farm was never dull because they kept rabbits, ferrets bees, cats, dogs and, for a time, a pet coyote. They also did hunting, fishing, and trapping, which were enjoyable pastimes for the two brothers.

George attended a genuine little red, one-teacher, wooden school a mile and a half away from his home. George’s older brother died young to the great sorrow of George and his family. George was influenced by one of his teachers in high school. Bess MacDonald, who taught him chemistry and physics, and persuaded him to go to college although George’s father was not very keen on the idea. Instead, he expected him to inherit the farm, and then people thought higher education was not necessary for farming.

George did manage to attend the University of Nebraska’s College of Agriculture with full intention to return to the farm. But college expenses changed his life.

George was interested in English, but he was given a summer job to help classifying genetic traits in wheat hybrid population for Professor F.D. Keim of the Agronomy Department. His interest in genetics increased and with Professor Keim’s recommendation, he went to Cornell University for graduate school in 1927. At Cornell University, George worked with Professor R.A. Emerson (1873-1947), the leading maize geneticist in the USA. The group of graduate students who worked with Emerson included George F. Sprauge, Marcus Rhoades, Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), and Hsen-Wen Li. All of them were outstanding and became world known figures in the field of genetics. Emerson’s work on kernel and plant color inheritance in maize was worldshocking. He had many contributions to the basic science of genetics, particularly the genetics of maize. His contribution to genetics also extends to the bean industry.

For his dissertation, Beadle worked on cytogenetics. He studied the genetic control of meiosis using corn lines, in which the chromosomal behavior was markedly modified genetically. He proved that heritable defects in pollen production were caused by the abnormal behavior of the chromosomes during meiosis, and that this behavior was in turn determined by genes. In 1931, he obtained his Ph.D. and went to California Institute of Technology (CalTech) to work with Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945), the giant geneticist, just moved from Columbia to California. In CalTech, George immediately found he was working with colleagues such as A.H.Sturvant (1891-1970), J. Schultz, E.G.Anderson, R. Emerson (1903-1959), K. Belar and Carl Lindgren, all biology giants of the time in the U.S. There were also distinguished international scientists such as C.D.Darlington (1903-), J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) and G. Karpechenko who were there as visiting scholars. Beadle shifetd his work to genetic recombination of Drosophila with Dobzhansky, Emerson, and Sturtevant at various times although he tried to keep also his corn cytogenics work going.

Beadle’s research was concentrated on the problem of crossing over in Drosophila (crossing over is a process by which genes are interchanged between parts of homologous chromosomes during meiosis.) He found that various aspects of crossing over and recombination occur at random when two cells unite. He also investigated homozyous and heterozyous translocation using Drosophila.

At Caltech, Beadle served as an instructor from 1933 to 1935. In 1933-34, a visiting scientist, Boris Ephrussi (1901-1979), from Paris came to CalTech. Dr. Ephrussi was interested in tissue culture; he used tissue transplantation to investigate gene action. Beadle became interested in tissue culture because he was particularly interested in bringing together genetics and embryology. As a result of this interaction, he went subsequently to Ephrussi’s laboratory in Paris and worked on embryonic bud transplantation. That was a great experience for him.

It should be noted that this took place during the great depression. CalTech was in dire financial straits at the time. The salary of George Beadle, paid by CalTech, in Paris, was $1,500 annually, and was actually provided by Morgan’s personal pocket. Beadle did not know this at the time, he learned this fact only many years later. Morgan was always generous in supporting worthy causes.

With Ephrussi, Beadle worked on mutants of Drosophila studying genes controlling vermilion eye. With the help of transplantation techniques, they successfully demonstrated that two genes in control led two postulated chemical reactions responsible for the biosynthesis of vermilion color of the eye. They also postulated the one gene-one enzyme concept.

Upon returning to the United States in 1936, Beadle was appointed an assistant professor at Harvard University working with Dr. Kenneth V. Thimann (1904-1970). In 1937, he was appointed a full professor at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. During these years, the work begun with Dr. Ephrussi continued unabated. Beadle and Ephrussi’s experiments with transplanted ovaries of Drosophila showed that "functional connections of the implanted ovary with a host oviduct may be established."

At Stanford University, Beadle worked closely with Dr. Edward L.Tatum and Dr. Clarence Clancy. At that time, Beadle’s researche turned to the study of Neurospora because Neurospora is easier to culture and to use for the identification of genes than the fruit flies. The cytogenetics of this role of DNA in protein synthesis and the difficulty in accepting the concept of one gene/one enzyme largely disappears. Today, with the discovery of RNA exon splicing, the one gene/one enzyme concept is no longer valid. Nevertheless, the one gene/one enzyme concept was a good guiding light.

From 1959 to 1960, Dr. Beadle was an Eastman Visiting Professor of Oxford University in London. In 1961, he was appointed chancellor of the University of Chicago. He then served as the president of that university from 1962 to 1968. Although administration became his main activities, he still carried research as a professor of biology until 1978. Concurrently, he served as a trustee member of the California Institute of Technology (1970-1978) and an honorary trustee member of the University of Chicago in 1971.

Beadle had been active in many scientific organizations. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (he was chairman of the committee on genetic effect of atomic radiation), American Philosophical Society, American Society of Zoologists, American Society of Naturalists, Botanical Society of America, and Genetics Society of America. He was also a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, Sigma Xi, and Cosmos Club. He served as the president of the Genetics Society of America in 1946, and also president of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (A.A.A.S.) in 1953. He also served with the advisory committee of biology and medicine of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1948 to 1950. He had been associated with the divisional committee for biological sciences of the National Science Foundation since 1951, and worked with the Los Angeles county branch of the medical and scientific advisory board of the American Cancer Society.

Beadle received many awards. He was the recipient of the Lasker Award of the American Public Health Association in 1950, the Dyer Lecturship Award in 1951, and the Emil Christain Hansen Prize of Denmark in 1953, Albert Einstein Commemorative Award in Science in 1958, Nobel Prize in 1958, American Cancer Society Award in 1959, Kimber Genetics Award in 1960, and the Donald Forsha Jones Medal in 1972. Honorary degrees have been conferred on him by more than 31 universities and colleges from the U.S. and foreign countries. In addition to many research papers, Beadle co-authored with Dr. A.H. Sturtevant on a book entitled, "An Introduction to Genetics," (Saunders, 1939). He wrote the book, "Genetics and Modern Biology," himself in 1963. In 1966, he co-authored with his second wife, Muriel Beadle, "Language of Life."

Beadle was the kind of person whose fancy was tickled by his derivation from a community with an assuming name. He liked activities that involved physical exertion. In all these activities he showed his basic competitiveness. He was a ferocious tennis player, mountain climber, and also an enthusiastic gardener.

Beadle married Marion Cecile Hill on August 22, 1928, and had a son, David. But the couple was later separated. On August 21, 1953, he married Muriel McClure Burnett, His stepson is Raymond James Burnett.

After retirement, the Beadles lived in Pomona, California, until his death on June 9, 1989.