Abstract
We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.
JBR warmly congratulates Jeffrey C. Hall and Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University, as well as Michael W. Young of The Rockefeller University, for their selection as the 2017 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine. They were honored “for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm” (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2017/press.html). Of course, they stood on the shoulders of a few giants, and already their own broad shoulders have hosted a generation of new researchers and provided spectacular insights into the mechanisms of circadian timekeeping. In little more than 50 years, we have moved from debates about the existence of an endogenous “clock” to the identification of a pathological point mutation in the human homolog of a fruit fly gene that regulates behavioral rhythmicity. Literally, “a clockwork explosion!” (Reppert, 1998).
By the way, JBR was there. The first review article in the journal, in the second year of its existence, was authored 30 years ago by Hall and Rosbash, examining our unfolding knowledge of the mutations in 5 different species that were isolated based on their disruption of overt circadian rhythmicity (Hall and Rosbash, 1987). The paper concluded with the following: The resultant knowledge has still not indicated that the genetic approaches are a panacea for finally getting at the inner workings of biological clocks. But since there ultimately has to be genetic control over these oscillators’ structures and functions, further work on Drosophila’s per gene, analogous experiments that are now being performed on the frq gene in Neurospora, and future molecular genetic efforts on additional clock genes in these and other organisms seem as if they must help us understand more than we now know about the complex cellular and biochemical underpinnings of biological timers.
Yes, indeed, it does seem as if they must help us understand more than we now know!
Twenty years later, JBR celebrated Young as the 2006 Pittendrigh/Aschoff lecturer of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the first lecture in that series to focus on “clock genes” (Meyer and Young, 2007) (Rosbash was the 2010 lecturer); by 2006, “clock genes” included per, tim, dbt, Clk, cyc, vri, sgg, ck2, slmb, pdp1, pp2a, and jet in Drosophila (and of course even more in mice, fungi, plants, and cyanobacteria). Thus, while 200 years had to pass to realize the significance of de Mairan’s original botanical observation, it took an order of magnitude less to capitalize on genetic mutants.
Jeff, Michael, and Mike, thank you for raising us up!