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Lysogeny

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Working with Elie Wollman and Jacques Monod
François Jacob Scientist
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Il a été invité par Gunther Stent à repasser une année aux Etats-Unis. Alors là, on a fait beaucoup de choses à ce moment-là, Elie et moi. On a fait en particulier toute la... En étudiant la lysogénie et la génétique de la lysogénie, avec K12, on a fait surtout le système K12, l'étude de... On a décortiqué la mécanique et l'injection, etc.

[Q] La conjugaison...

C'est ça. Où on pouvait cartographier avec le temps, etc. Là-dessus, il est reparti chez Stent et on avait tout de même un matériel... Ce K12, avec son système d'injection, c'était quand même exceptionnel pour analyser des fonctions cellulaires. Donc, avec Monod, on s'est dit: on va regarder le lactose comment ça marche. Le lactose, il y avait une région lactose précise, on pouvait prendre des bactéries réceptrices avec une délétion de la région lactose, injecter le lactose, voir quand ça s'exprime, comment ça s'exprime, le gène Z+, les trois gènes, le I+. Donc, on a commencé à décortiquer tout ce système là. Et là... Elie avait disparu de la circulation. Et la grosse partie de notre travail on la faite en son absence, il ne s'en est jamais remis. Jamais, ça c'est très simple.

[Q] Il avait eu l'impression qu'il avait raté le bon moment.

Oui. D'autant plus que c'est ça qui nous a valu le prix Nobel et il n'a pas tellement aimé.

[Q] Et vous aviez gardé de cette collaboration avec Elie Wollman un très bon souvenir?

On l'a gardé jusqu'au moment où il est parti. Et quand il est revenu... Là-dessus j'ai commencé à travailler avec Monod, on a fait beaucoup de choses. Quand il est revenu, j'ai proposé à Wollman de venir travailler avec nous. Jamais! Ça c'était typique. C'est un truc qu'on avait commencé sans lui, il n'allait pas rattraper la locomotive.

Gunther Stent had invited him to go back to the United States for another year. Elie and I did a lot of things at the time. In particular, we did all of the... when studying lysogeny and its genetic with K12, we mainly did the K12 system, the study of... we dissected the mechanism and the injection, etc.

[Q] The conjugation...

That's right. Where we were able to map out with time, etc. With that, he returned to Stent's laboratory and nonetheless we had equipment... That K12, with its injection system, was nevertheless exceptional to analyse cellular functions. So, with Monod we decided we're going to look at how lactose works. There was a specific lactose region, we could take receiving bacteria with the deletion of the lactose region, inject lactose, see how the Z(+) gene, the three genes and I(+) manifest themselves. So we started dissecting all of that system. And then... Elie had vanished. And we did the majority of our work in his absence, he never got over it. Never.

[Q] He got the impression that he'd missed the right moment.

Yes. All the more so since that's what we got the Nobel Prize for and he didn't really like that.

[Q] And you had kept fond memories of your collaboration with Elie Wollman?

We kept them until the day he left. And when he came back... At that point I started working with Monod, we did a lot of things. When Wollman came back, I invited him to come back and work with us. Never! That was typical. It was something we had started without him, he wasn't going to jump back onto the wagon.

François Jacob (1920-2013) was a French biochemist whose work has led to advances in the understanding of the ways in which genes are controlled. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Jacque Monod and André Lwoff, for his contribution to the field of biochemistry. His later work included studies on gene control and on embryogenesis. Besides the Nobel Prize, he also received the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 1996 and was elected a member of the French Academy in 1996.

Listeners: Michel Morange

Michel Morange est généticien et professeur à L'Université Paris VI ainsi qu'à l'Ecole Normale Supérieure où il dirige le Centre Cavaillès d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences. Après l'obtention d'une license en Biochimie ainsi que de deux Doctorats, l'un en Biochimie, l'autre en Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences, il rejoint le laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire dirigé par le Professeur François Jacob à l'Institut Pasteur. Ses principaux travaux de recherche se sont portés sur l'Histoire de la Biologie au XXème siècle, la naissance et le développement de la Biologie Moléculaire, ses transformations récentes et ses interactions avec les autres disciplines biologiques. Auteur de "La Part des Gènes" ainsi que de "Histoire de la Biologie Moléculaire", il est spécialiste de la structure, de la fonction et de l'ingénerie des protéines.

Michel Morange is a professor of Biology and Director of the Centre Cavaillès of History and Philosophy of Science at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. After having obtained a Bachelor in biochemistry and two PhDs, one in Biochemistry, the other in History and Philosophy of Science, he went on to join the research unit of Molecular Genetics headed by François Jacob, in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Pasteur Institute, Paris. Together with Olivier Bensaude, he discovered that Heat Shock Proteins are specifically expressed on the onset of the mouse zygotic genome activation. Since then he has been working on the properties of Heat Shock Proteins, their role in aggregation and on the regulation of expression of these proteins during mouse embryogenesis. He is the author of 'A History of Molecular Biology' and 'The Misunderstood Gene'.

Tags: Gunther Stent, Elie Wollman, Jacques Monod

Duration: 2 minutes, 9 seconds

Date story recorded: October 2004

Date story went live: 24 January 2008