The people behind discoveries Project 2 Ana-Maria Dragoi

1. The people behind discoveriesProject 2Ana-Maria Dragoi

2. From research to diagnosis and treatment Patient complain: A nodule on the left breast detected during a routine examination MRI exams identifies a tumor-like mass in the left breast Biopsy for tumor etiology Gene expression Radiation and chemotherapy decided Infection developed due to a compromised immune system Antibiotic regimen to clear the infection Tumor and infection clearance

3. Sir Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur were was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Both encountered couple of obstacles along the way… At the age of 15 Sir Peter Mansfield he was told by a careers teacher that science wasn't for him. He left school shortly afterwards to work as a printer's assistant. But Mansfield graduated with a BSc from Queen Mary's in 1959. His final-year project, supervised by Dr. Jack Powles, was to construct a portable, transistor-based spectrometer to measure the Earth’s magnetic fielg. Towards the end of this project Powles offered Mansfield a position in his NMR research group. The rest is history. Meanwhile across an ocean, as a teenager, Paul Lauterbur built his own laboratory in the basement of his parents' house. Years later after the publication of his paper about the MRI discoveries Lauterbur unsuccessfully attempted to file patents related to his work to commercialize the discovery. "The company that was in charge of such applications decided that it would not repay the expense of getting a patent. That turned out not to be a spectacularly good decision," Lauterbur said in 2003. Moral: "Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. In 1983, Kary Mulliswas working for Cetus Corp. as a chemist. That spring, according to Mullis, he was driving his vehicle late one night with his girlfriend, who was also a chemist at Cetus, when he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase, a technique which would allow a small strand of DNA to be copied almost an infinite number of times. Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR December 16, 1983. In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the success didn't make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him shortly before: "I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither my assistant Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome.“ He received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention for the discovery that will change the face of biology research. Himself said “I like writing about biology not doing it”… and a lot of other things people don’t exactly agree with. Moral: When you single-handedly split the molecular biology era in “pre-PCR” and “post-PCR” you are allowed to be a little weird…

5. The Curies are the family with the most Nobel laureates to date. They were rewarded for their work on ionizing radiation. Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. Pierre Curie met Maria Skłodowska when a friend introduced him to her. What attracted Pierre to Marie was that she wasn't like other girls—she was devoted to science. (you are allowed to roll your eyes here) Jointly with her husband, Irene Joliot-Curie (Marie and Pierre’s daughter) was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. Both children of the Joliot-Curies are also esteemed scientists. The field of radiation therapy began to grow in the early 1900s largely due to the groundbreaking work of the Curie family. "There were five Nobel Prizes in my family, two for my mother, one for my father, one for my sister and brother-in-law and one for my husband. Only I was not successful…“ Eve Curie (writer, journalist and pianist)

6. Dorothy Hodgkin who is founder of the science of protein crystallography worked out the structure of penicillin, insulin and vitamin B12. Because of her discoveries we can design better drugs taking into account the structure of the protein. But when, after 31 years of work, she won the Nobel Prize for science in 1964 the Daily Mail chose to run the story under the headline "Oxford housewife wins Nobel“. Moral: There are a lot of ingredients and ideas that come up to you in the kitchen…

7. Alexander Fleming was born in 1881 at Lochfield farm in Scotland. By 1927, hewas investigating the properties of staphylococcis. He was already well-known from his earlier work, and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher, but his laboratory was often untidy. On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory after a holiday with his family. Before leaving, he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. On returning, Fleming noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci that had immediately surrounded it had been destroyed. He said later "When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.“ Moral: Never leave the house thinking your day in the laboratory will be dull…

8. From research to diagnosis and treatment Patient complain: A nodule on the left breast detected during a routine examination Sir Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur Biopsy for tumor etiology Kary Mullis The Curies and Dorothy Hodgkin Infection developed due to a compromised immune system Alexander Fleming Tumor and infection clearance

9. Moral of the story: Not everyone can become a great scientist, but a great scientist can come from anywhere.