To listen to more of Renato Dulbecco’s stories, go to the playlist: [ Ссылка ]
The Italian biologist Renato Dulbecco (1914-2012) had early success isolating a mutant of the polio virus which was used to create a life-saving vaccine. Later in his career, he initiated the Human Genome Project and was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975 for furthering our understanding of cancer caused by viruses. [Listener: Paola De Paoli Marchetti; date recorded: 2005]
TRANSCRIPT: If there are two types, there must also be two types of protein inside the cells, because the proteins are the expression of the gene, and in fact it was already known for some time that are specific virus proteins, that are grouped together under the general name 'T antigen', 'tumoral antigen', you see? And these... then it is seen, that there are several types and we managed to demonstrate precisely that one of these types was produced by transformed genes and we also saw that this protein connected to the cellular DNA, therefore the influence on cellular DNA also came in part from that. Therefore, with all this, the general context became fairly clear. Naturally, there were relatively small points to be resolved and so we made mutants for the transformation. And the mutants were variants that behaved differently under different conditions. The most common that were used then were those called 'temperature mutants', which are mutants that do not function at a particular temperature that is a little higher, but only function at lower temperatures, so that, if the mutant is isolated and the temperature is raised, its activity lessens. So therefore, we saw that with these, the ability of the cells themselves to respond to changes in temperature changed and thus the mutant was a temperature mutant because the protein that was produced was sensitive to temperature, thus the virus clearly acted on the cell with these proteins.
And then things progressed; there was a lot of other work. Thus, this was effectively the most important part, the reason why they gave me the Nobel Prize, because it was this interaction... as you say the modification, the justification of the virus... it was said for having discovered the reciprocal interaction between the virus genes and the genes of the cell. But in short, for me, the most fundamental thing was still to have demonstrated that a gene, or one or two virus genes are capable of transforming the cell, therefore it shifted the problem to what this gene does that transforms and then, naturally, on the basis of this, one can think of normal cancer perhaps happening in the same way, not because there is a virus gene, that normally isn't there, but because a gene itself of the cell changes and in fact after these things are demonstrated.
[PDPM] It was in fact, let's say, the commencement of trying to understand cancer.
Yes, of course. And thus, all this was very good.
