Allan Maxam (born October 28, 1942) is one of the pioneers of

molecular genetics Molecular genetics is a branch of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the st ...

. He was one of the contributors to develop a

DNA sequencing DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. The ...

method at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, while working as a student in the laboratory of

Walter Gilbert Walter Gilbert (born March 21, 1932) is an American biochemist, physicist, molecular biology pioneer, and Nobel laureate. Education and early life Walter Gilbert was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1932, into a Jewish family, the so ...

. Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam developed a

method - now called Maxam-Gilbert sequencing - which combined chemicals that cut DNA only at specific bases with

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...

labeling and

polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) is a technique widely used in biochemistry, forensic chemistry, genetics, molecular biology and biotechnology to separate biological macromolecules, usually proteins or nucleic acids, according to their ...

to determine the sequence of long DNA segments.Maxam AM, Gilbert W, Sequencing end-labeled DNA with base-specific chemical cleavages, Methods Enzymol. 1980;65(1):499-560 Allan Maxam and Walter Gilbert’s 1977 paper “A new method for sequencing DNA” was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society for 2017. It was presented to the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard University.

References

* Gilbert, Walter and Maxam. Allan, The Nucleotide Sequence of the Lac Operator, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 70, 3581-3584 (1973). * Maxam AM, Tizard R, Skryabin KG, Gilbert W, Promoter region for yeast 5S ribosomal RNA, Nature. 1977 June 16;267(5612):643-5

References

See also