Brenner, Sydney

Brenner, Sydney, born in 1927, South African-born British geneticist and cowinner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of organ development and cell death in multicellular animals. Brenner shared the prize with two former colleagues, British geneticist Sir John E. Sulston and American geneticist H. Robert Horvitz.

Brenner was born in Germiston, South Africa. He studied biology at the University of Witwatersand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1947 and his master’s degree in 1951. A doctoral degree in chemistry from Oxford University in England followed in 1954. In 1956 Brenner joined the Medical Research Council (MRC) in Cambridge, England. He served as director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 1979 to 1987 and director of the MRC Unit of Molecular Genetics from 1987 until he retired in 1992. In 1996 he came out of retirement to become director of the Molecular Sciences Institute, a private research institute in Berkeley, California. In 2000 Brenner became a distinguished research professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

In his early work beginning in the mid-1950s, Brenner studied how deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic material of living things, instructs cells to make proteins. Working with French biologist and future Nobel laureate François Jacob and other scientists, in 1961 Brenner identified messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), a molecule that acts as an intermediary between DNA and protein production. In that same year Brenner and British biophysicist Francis Crick, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962, identified codons, groups of three nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA). Brenner and Crick showed that codons provide instructions for the creation of all 20 amino acids that form the foundation of proteins.

By the late 1960s Brenner believed that most of the difficult problems in genetics had been solved. He then turned his attention to study how genes regulate cell division, cell specialization, and organ development in multicellular animals. Brenner chose as his experimental model the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. This small worm contains less than 1,000 cells. It is transparent, making it easy for scientists using a microscope to observe the worm during its short life cycle as it grows from a fertilized egg and develops different cell types, such as muscle, heart, and nerves.

In 1974 Brenner demonstrated that the chemical compound ethyl methane sulphonate (EMS) can induce specific mutations, or changes, in the genetic makeup of C. elegans. Additional studies showed that different mutations could be linked to specific genes and to specific effects on organ development.

Brenner’s work laid the foundation for later work performed by Sulston and Horvitz. Sulston developed techniques that tracked each cell division and cell specialization that occurred during the development of all tissues in C. elegans. During this work, Sulston found that specific cells undergo programmed cell death, the process in which healthy cells kill themselves, as a normal part of the organism’s development. He also identified the first mutation of a gene participating in the cell death process. Horvitz later identified key genes that control programmed cell death in C. elegans and he found that corresponding genes exist in humans.

Brenner’s work on the genetic regulation in C. elegans, coupled with the work on programmed cell death by Sulston and Horvitz, advanced scientific understanding of a number of human diseases that result when programmed cell death goes awry. Excessive cell death may result in such diseases as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), coronary heart disease, and stroke. Other diseases, such as cancer and certain autoimmune diseases, occur when programmed cell death is reduced, leading to the survival of cells that normally would die off.

In recognition for his groundbreaking achievements in genetics, in addition to the Nobel Prize Brenner has received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1971, the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1991, which he shared with Sulston, and the Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award in 2000. He is the author of My Life in Science (2001).