9 Scientists Behind Modern Biotech助推现代生物技术发展的九位科学家

文/海伦•阿尔贝特 译/焦琳 审订/任东升

By Helen Albert

Over the last 25 years, biotech has become a burgeoning worldwide industry. It only became the success it is today on the back of excellent science.

Here is a selection of scientists we think made a significant contribution.

1. Károly Ereky (1878—1952)

Károly Ereky was the first person to use the term ‘biotechnology’ to describe the transformation of raw materials into useful products using biology. A Hungarian agricultural engineer, he was an expert on the food industry and wanted to apply scientific principles to make food production more efficient and cost-effective. For example, one of his many publications was a book discussing how leaf proteins could be used as a possible food source. Known by some as the ‘father’ of biotechnology, he became the Hungarian Minister of Food in 1919. However, he was probably most well known for an enormous and highly profitable pig farm and slaughterhouse he set up that had the capacity to raise 100,000 pigs per year.

过去25年间，生物技术蓬勃发展，成为全球性产业。它取得今天的成功都是得益于科学的卓越成就。

以下是一些我们认为做出重要贡献的科学家。

1. 卡罗伊·埃赖基（1878—1952）

卡罗伊·埃赖基是最先使用“生物技术”一词指称利用生物学知识将原材料转化为实用产品的过程。他是一位匈牙利农业工程师，也是食品工业专家，致力于运用科学原理提高食品的生产效率和成本效益。他著述颇多，其中一本书就探讨了用叶蛋白制造食品的可能性。埃赖基被称为“生物技术之父”，并在1919年出任匈牙利食品部部长。但他最广为人知的事迹，大概还要数开办了一家养猪兼屠宰场，规模大、效益高，每年生猪产能高达10万头。

2. Eva Ekeblad (1724—1786)

Swedish countess and scientist Eva Ekeblad was ahead of her time. In 1746,she discovered a technique to make both alcohol and flour from potatoes, a relatively rare vegetable in Sweden at the time. This discovery helped reduce famine by diverting grains used to make alcohol back into the food chain. An entrepreneurial spirit, she also realized the potato flour she created could be used as a cosmetic face and wig powder to replace the poisonous arsenic powder being used at the time.

3. Wilhelm Roux (1850—1924)

Wilhelm Roux was a clinical doctor,but spent much of his career conducting experiments in the field of embryology in animals, birds and amphibians. The German scientist is most well known for establishing the principles of tissue culture, an extremely widely used technique in modern labs. In an experiment carried out in 1885, he managed to keep neuronal cells taken from a chicken embryo alive in a warm saline solution for 13 days, a technique that was later refined and expanded on by other scientists. He also made enlightened observations on cell distribution during embryo development in studies using frog embryos.

2. 埃娃·埃克布拉德（1724—1786）

身为瑞典伯爵夫人的女科学家埃娃·埃克布拉德有着超前的思维。1746年，她发明了制作土豆酒和土豆粉的技术，当时土豆在瑞典还不是常见蔬菜。得益于这一发现，用于酿酒的谷物重回主食行列，从而缓解了饥荒。埃克布拉德颇具创业眼光，她发现自己制造的马铃薯粉还能当化妆扑面粉和假发粉用，足以取代当时常用的有毒砷粉。

3. 威廉·鲁克斯（1850—1924）

威廉·鲁克斯是一名临床医生，但他将职业生涯的大部分时间投入到了动物、鸟类和两栖动物的胚胎学实验中。这位德国科学家的最著名成就是提出了组织培养的原理，这一技术在现代实验室中的应用极为广泛。他1885年做了一项实验，从鸡胚胎中提取神经元细胞，使其在温盐水中存活了13天，这一技术被后来的科学家进一步完善和扩充。鲁克斯还用青蛙胚胎开展研究，就胚胎发育过程中的细胞分布提出真知灼见。

4. Maurice Lemoigne (1883—1967)

Given the current popularity of the topic, it may seem a bit unbelievable that the first biodegradable ‘bioplastic’—polyhydroxybutyrate or PHB—was discovered in 1926 by French biologist and engineer Maurice Lemoigne.He was working with the microbe Bacillus megaterium and discovered that it produced PHB when nutrients were scarce and the conditions were‘stressful’ for the bacteria. At the time,petroleum was cheap and readily available and so Lemoigne’s discovery was ignored for many years. Now PHB is one of several bio-based and biodegradable plastics on the market. Lemoigne’s other research mostly had a focus on fermentation, water treatment, and soil fertilization.

5. Jean Purdy (1945—1985)

4. 莫里斯·勒穆瓦涅（1883—1967）

可降解生物塑料当下讨论热度极高，所以人们多少有点不敢相信，最早的可降解“生物塑料”——聚羟基丁酸酯（PHB）竟在1926年就已问世。它的发现者是法国生物学家、工程师莫里斯·勒穆瓦涅，他研究巨大芽孢杆菌时发现，营养匮乏和状况“紧张”会促使其产生PHB。但当时石油既便宜又充足，所以很多年里，勒穆瓦涅的发现都未引起关注。而到了今天，市面上的生物基可降解塑料也不过几种，当中就有PHB。除此之外，勒穆瓦涅还进行了其他研究，主要集中在发酵、水处理和提高土壤肥力。

5. 琼·珀迪（1945—1985）

琼·珀迪是一名英国助研护士，与两位同事——生物学家罗伯特·爱德华兹、临床医生帕特里克·斯特普托共同研发了体外受精技术。1968年，珀迪来到剑桥生理学实验室与爱德华兹共事。他们利用不孕女性自愿提供的卵子进行实验，最终于1978年在实验室成功使一枚卵子受精。这枚受精卵被移植回母体后，诞生了世界上第一个“试管婴儿”路易丝·布朗。珀迪因患黑色素瘤英年早逝，但不长的职业生涯中帮助孕育试管婴儿多达370名。

Jean Purdy was a British research nurse who developed in vitro fertilization along with two colleagues—biologist Robert Edwards and clinician Patrick Steptoe. Purdy came to work with Edwards at the Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge in 1968. They experimented with eggs given voluntarily by infertile women and eventually managed to fertilize one in the lab in 1978.This egg was implanted and became Louise Brown, the first ‘test-tube baby’.Purdy died young of melanoma, but in her career she helped 370 children to be conceived in vitro.

6. Brigitte Askonas (1923—2013)

Brigitte Askonas was born in Austria to Czech parents, but spent much of her life in Canada, the US and the UK. She was head of the immunology division at the National Institute for Medical Research in London from 1976 until she retired. She was instrumental in designing one of the early methods for creating monoclonal antibodies,now widely used for treating cancer and autoimmune disease. She also discovered that immune cells called T-killer cells have the ability to recognize viral subtypes, a principle now being used to develop vaccines against a variety of infections including influenza and HIV.She was asked to join the Royal Society in the UK as a recognition of her achievements in 1973.

7. Daisy Roulland-Dussoix (1936—2014)

6. 布丽吉特·阿斯科纳斯（1923—2013）

布丽吉特·阿斯科纳斯的父母都是捷克人，她生在奥地利，但大部分时间生活在加拿大、美国和英国。从1976年起，她就是伦敦国家医学研究院免疫学部门的负责人，一直干到退休。她帮助研发出了一种制造单克隆抗体的早期方法，如今广泛用于治疗癌症和自身免疫疾病。她还发现被称为杀手T细胞的免疫细胞具有识别病毒亚型的能力，人们利用这一特性进行疫苗研发，预防多种感染，包括流感和艾滋病病毒。1973年，英国皇家学会向她发出入会邀请，以认可她的成就。

7. 黛西·鲁兰-迪苏瓦（1936—2014）

黛西·鲁兰-迪苏瓦是瑞士微生物遗传学家。她师从瑞士科学家维尔纳·阿贝尔攻读博士学位期间，发现了限制性内切酶，这种蛋白质可以精确切割DNA。此前人们已经了解，细菌能够降解噬菌体病毒。然而，鲁兰-迪苏瓦和阿贝尔1962年共同撰写的一篇论文阐明，具有这一功能的其实是细菌产生的酶。职业生涯后期，鲁兰-迪苏瓦一直在美国与哈罗德·瓦默斯共事，后者因发现病毒癌基因与迈克尔·毕晓普共同获得1989年的诺贝尔奖。

Daisy Roulland-Dussoix was a Swiss microbial geneticist. She did her PhD with Swiss scientist Werner Arber and in the process discovered restriction enzymes, proteins that can cut DNA at precise points. It was already known that bacteria could break down viruses called phages. However, a paper authored solely by Roulland-Dussoix and Arber showed in 1962 that enzymes produced by the bacteria were responsible. Later in her career, she worked in the US with Harold Varmus, who was awarded the Nobel prize with Michael Bishop in 1989 for the discovery of viral oncogenes.

黛西·鲁兰-迪苏瓦

8. Rudolf Jaenisch (born 1942)

Rudolf Jaenisch is a German scientist currently working as Professor of Biology at MIT. He had a breakthrough in 1974 with the American scientist Beatrice Mintz when they created the first transgenic mouse. They showed that injecting retrovirus DNA into mouse embryos led to the virus being integrated into the animal’s genome, a change that was also passed to the offspring. This technology is now widely used to create mouse models for a wide variety of human diseases and has been instrumental in the development of many drugs.

9. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (born 1947)

8. 鲁道夫·耶尼施（1942—）

鲁道夫·耶尼施是一名德国科学家，目前是麻省理工学院生物学教授。1974年他与美国科学家贝娅特丽斯·明茨共同培育出世界上第一只转基因老鼠，可谓重大科研突破。实验表明，将逆转录病毒DNA注入老鼠胚胎会导致病毒被整合进老鼠的基因组，这种变化也会遗传给后代。目前这项技术已被广泛用于建立小鼠模型以研究各种人类疾病，并在多种药物的开发中发挥了重要作用。

9. 弗朗索瓦丝·巴雷-西努西（1947—）

弗朗索瓦丝·巴雷-西努西，法国病毒学家，现已退休，曾是巴黎巴斯德研究所的教授。20世纪80年代艾滋病流行时，科学家们对病源毫无头绪。巴雷-西努西对逆转录病毒有深厚研究，这使他于1983年发现了艾滋病毒。为表彰这一发现，2008年她和前同事吕克·蒙塔尼耶被共同授予诺贝尔奖。1988年，巴雷-西努西在巴斯德研究所建立了自己的实验室，带领团队进行了大量关于艾滋病毒及其传播的研究。她的成就之一是发现了宿主先天免疫系统在控制艾滋病毒/艾滋病方面的作用，以及影响艾滋病毒母婴传播的因

素。 □

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist, now retired, who was a professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. During the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, scientists were at a loss to know what was causing the disease. Her knowledge of retroviruses led her to discover the HIV virus in 1983.She was awarded the Nobel prize in 2008 for the discovery of HIV along with her former colleague Luc Montagnier. Barré-Sinoussi started her own lab at Institut Pasteur in 1988. She and her team have carried out enormous amounts of research relating to HIV and its transmission.Among other things, she discovered the role of the innate immune system of the host in control of HIV/AIDs and the factors that influence mother-to-child transmission of the virus. ■