Abstract
Most advances in biology can usually be traced back to the development
of a new
technique: the recent explosion in sequence information in the databases
arose
from the pioneering work on separation methods by Frederick Sanger which
paved the way for the development of protein (Sanger, 1945) and DNA/RNA
(Maxam & Gilbert, 1977; Sanger, 1981) sequencing and culminated in
the receipt
of two Nobel prizes by Sanger. The initial phase of sequence database expansion
was slow due to the tedious and slow nature of protein sequencing. Peptide
sequencing was carried out manually and the complete analysis of a protein
was
tiresome, requiring the isolation of sufficient peptides from several digests
of the
target protein using proteases of different specialities to collect an
overlapping set
of fragments which cover the whole sequence. Protein sequencing gained
momentum when the phenylisothiocyanate sequencing chemistry developed by
Edman in 1949 was automated (Edman & Begg, 1967) and a commercial
instrument requiring lower amounts (nanomoles) of sample was put on the
market. Further technical advances such as novel valves to deal with small
volumes of aggressive chemicals, the introduction of high pressure liquid
chromatography (HPLC), and novel supports for sample immobilization, were
all
combined in the first gas phase sequencers, greatly increasing the sensitivity
and
allowing automated data collection (Hewick et al. 1981) and analysis.
The new
instruments with a sensitivity in the low picomole range appeared as rapid
advances in DNA technology such as the development of restriction mapping
(Danna et al. 1973), cloning (Cohen et al. 1973) and
the dideoxynucleotide
sequencing chemistry were threatening to make protein chemistry a relic
of the
past (Malcolm, 1978).
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Cited by
214 articles.
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