SubSection VRU/1/1 - John D Smith Correspondence

Extent: 1 folder

John Derek Smith correspondence: Letter from Admiralty? Medical Lab, Emsworth? containing 15 b & w photographs labelled T2 A and some plant? material, Nov 1953 Letter from Piotr Stominsk, Lab. de Génétique, Paris, re thanks for sample received, 10 Feb 1954 Letters from Piotr Stominsk: bundle of 4 handwritten letters in envelopes from Piotr Stominsk, France, re visa problems, summary of work he would like to pursue in Cambridge, experiments etc., 7 May-17 Aug 1954. Invoice from Academic Press Inc. (New York) 1 March 1954. Letter to J D Smith from Martin, Medical Research Council (MRC) re Piotr (Stominsk), enzyme production, 26 March 1954. Letter to J D Smith from Martin, MRC, re purine analogue, penicillinase production, RNA metabolism, 3 May 1954. Letter to Academic Press Inc. from J D Smith re invoice, 28 May 1954. Letter from Academic Press Inc. to J D Smith, re contributors to 'The Nucleic Acids', Vol 1 &II,, E Chargaff and J N Davidson (eds), list of contents (chapter contributed by Smith: 'The Electrophoretic Separation of Nucleic Acid Components'), June 1954. Bundle of letters between J D smith and J A V Butler (The Chester Beatty Research Inst.) re samples of the turnip yellow mosaic virus and RNA from tobacco mosaic virus for experiments and results, 17 Sep-9 Dec 1954. Letter to Mr R H Pain, The Chester Beatty Research Inst., London from J D Smith, re turnip yellow mosaic virus sample with instructions on preparing the nucleic acid, 25 Sep 1954. Letter to J D Smith, The Molteno Inst., Cambridge from Anthony C[amps], Pembroke College, Cambridge, re a candidate for a research fellowship, 28 Feb 1955. Letter bundle: between W A Camps (Pembroke College) and Roy Markham re D B Dunn as candidate for a research fellowship, including Markham's report, Feb 1955. Letters between Dr Alexander Rich, Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, USA/Inst of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA and J D Smith, re RNA: turnip yellow mosaic virus RNA, preparing nucleic acid, results of experiments, 5 Jan - 8 March 1955. Critique of a manuscript 'Comparative Studies on the Occurrence of the Carnosine-Anserine Fraction in Skeletal Muscle and Heart', nd [c 1955], possibly the manuscript referred to in a letter to Dr Alexander Rich, USA, March 1955.

Admin History: John Derek Smith (8 Dec 1924 - 22 Nov 2003): a Cambridge molecular biologist who made important contributions to the early work on nucleic acids. He was one of only a handful of scientists who understood the importance of nucleic acids before 1953, the year Watson and Crick uncovered the structure of DNA. He entered Clare College, Cambridge in 1942, obtaining a degree in botany. His research career started as a student with Roy Markham and David Keilin at the Molteno Institute in Cambridge. Here he became interested in RNA (ribonucleic acid molecules), the genetic material of many plant and animal viruses, and developed paper chromatographic methods for analysing nucleosides and their relatives.This, together with studies of how the enzyme pancreatic ribonuclease (which digests the RNA molecules in food you eat) carries out its chemical action, helped elucidate the backbone structure of all RNA molecules. He then used the same chromatographic techniques to analyse the units of which DNA is built. Smith discovered, with David Dunn, rare and unexpected modifications of the DNA bases in bacterial genomes: the "restriction" enzymes which are now used to manipulate all kinds of DNA and are at the heart of modern genetic engineering. In the latter 1950s Smith went to Caltech (the California Institute of Technology) where he collaborated with Renato Dulbecco and Giuseppe Attardi. Amongst other things, he showed that polyoma, a member of the virus family responsible for human warts, is a DNA virus. By 1962, Smith was recognised as one of the leading nucleic acid chemists and in that year accepted an invitation to return to Cambridge as a permanent member of staff in the newly formed Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB). Together with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner, he formed the core of the Division of Molecular Genetics and remained there until his retirement in 1988. Scientific career: Agricultural Research Council Virus Research Unit, Cambridge 1945-59; Research Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge 1949-52; Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, University of California, Berkeley 1955-57; Senior Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology 1959-62, Sherman Fairchild Scholar 1974-75; Member of Scientific Staff, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge 1962-88, Head, Subdivision of Biochemistry, Cell Biology Division 1976-88; FRS 1976.