STORIES BEHIND DISCOVERY
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STORIES BEHIND DISCOVERY |
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Serendipity & Perseverance: The career of a marine biologist I was first appointed as an assistant professor in the Biochemistry Department, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's in 1974. Because of my research interest in the biosynthesis and processing of insulin precursors using the Brockman body of the codfish as an experimental model, I had my research laboratory located at the Ocean Sciences Centre in Logy Bay, instead of on the main campus. With funding from the Medical Research Council, I was all set to start my work on insulin. However, my research took an unexpected twist following a disaster. One morning in February 1975, I was told by the custodian of the Ocean Sciences Centre that all my 200 plus cod kept in an in-house tank were frozen to death due to the unexpectedly low seawater temperature. Biopsies of the cod showed ice in the heart. While I was devastated by the disaster, I was at the same time, the most popular guy in the Centre that day because everyone wanted cod for dinner! However, to my surprise, there were some flatfish still "happily swimming" in the same tank. Knowing nothing about fish biology, I was struck with the obvious question "How come these flatfish (winter flounder) did not freeze to death?" Dr. Garth Fletcher, a fish physiologist at the Centre suggested that the flounder might contain some "antifreeze molecules." This was the beginning of my career in marine biology and our research in antifreeze protein and their subsequent application in transgenic fish. Throughout my career, I have had the good fortune to have many close collaborators including Garth Fletcher (Memorial University), Peter Davies (Queen's University), Daniel Yang and Vettai S. Ananthanarayanan (McMaster University), and Marilyn Griffith and Barbara Moffatt (University of Waterloo); a truly Canadian network of excellence in antifreeze research!
Our own venture into transgenic animals was initiated in 1981 during a coffee break conversation with Dr. Arnold Sutterlin, the salmon aquaculturist at the Ocean Science Centre. It is known that Atlantic salmon cannot tolerate freezing temperatures because they lack antifreeze protein gene(s), and this is one of the major obstacles to salmon farming in Atlantic Canada. For the past several years, presumably as a result of global warming, the sea water temperature actually declined in these regions and has posed a severe threat to existing salmon operations. Arnold wondered whether it was feasible to produce freeze-resistant salmon by AFP gene transfer. It was a challenge that a molecular biologist like myself would gladly accept. I was both naïve and excited to bite the bait! With funding support initially from the Banting Foundation and subsequently from NSERC, we have embarked on a study to produce transgenic salmon. Unlike the mice used in most transgenic studies, salmon produce eggs with invisible pronuclei that are difficult to microinject with DNA. This, together with the long reproductive cycle of salmon, has kept our progress very slow. Nonetheless, we were successful in generating transgenic salmon that inherit and express the AFP gene. Our present research goal is to explore different means to increase their AFP protein levels.
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