VOLUME 12, NUMBER 24 • JUNE 22, 2001

McCarty Receives David Rockefeller Award

Maclyn McCarty, the sole surviving member of the Rockefeller team that discovered that genes are made of DNA, received the Centennial David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service.

Thunderous applause and a standing ovation welcomed Professor Emeritus Maclyn McCarty when he received the Centennial David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service at last Thursday's Convocation for Conferring Degrees. Professor Emil Gotschlich, in presenting McCarty for the award, said, "Your many friends here -- and indeed all friends of The Rockefeller University -- are joyful that you, parent to one of the most lustrous moments in the first 50 years of this institution, have remained with us to celebrate the first hundred years of excellence."

McCarty, who turned 90 on Sat., June 9, came to Rockefeller in 1941 to join Oswald T. Avery's group, which was working to identify the chemical nature of the transforming principle in pneumococcus. McCarty applied his strong biochemical skills to perfect the purification of the transforming principle. McCarty, Avery and Colin MacLeod were the first to precipitate DNA from bacteria, and using enzymes to degrade different classes of molecules, they showed that DNA was the transforming factor.

Their landmark paper, "Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of

Pneumococcal Types," was published on February 1, 1944, in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. It was the first in a series of three papers that together provided conclusive evidence that DNA is the carrier of genetic information. McCarty went on to purify and crystallize for the first time the DNAse enzyme to absolutely verify that the genetic material was DNA, and to lay to rest the skepticism of some that it was of protein origin.

McCarty published his account of the discovery that genes are made of DNA in a book entitled The Transforming Principle (W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1985). President Emeritus Joshua Lederberg has called the book "a vibrant memoir that is a model for expert and methodical tackling of very difficult technical problems. … It displays the highest ideals of the scientific personality…"

In 1946, McCarty -- who had earlier trained as a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins University -- became head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology and Immunology at Rockefeller and tackled one of the dreaded diseases of the time, rheumatic fever. A malady that afflicts mostly children, rheumatic fever destroys the heart valve of both young and old. McCarty launched an attack on the causative agent, the group A streptococcus.

At the time, group A streptococcus was a poorly understood bacterium. McCarty's laboratory was composed primarily of physicians trying to approach the streptococcal/rheumatic fever problem from different perspectives: structurally, immunologically, biochemically, as well as clinically. Over the next four decades, through meticulous chemical analysis, he and his colleagues identified nearly every component that made up the streptococcal cell wall structure. Through his efforts and leadership in the field, the streptococcus remains today one of the best-characterized disease bacteria.

In addition to his groundbreaking laboratory research, McCarty's service to Rockefeller included a 14-year tenure as physician-in-chief of The Rockefeller Hospital (1960 to 1974) and 13 years as a vice president (1965 to 1978). Outside of the university, McCarty performed a vital service for the people of New York City as chairman of the Public Health Research Institute from 1985 to 1992.

Since 1963, he has been an editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine. "Every working day, punctually at 9 a.m., he comes to his office for several hours and reviews manuscripts," said Gotschlich.

At a dinner honoring the Centennial Honorary Degree recipients and McCarty, Professor Vincent Fischetti paid tribute to McCarty's legacy. "Unlike many of his colleagues at the time, who would put their names as authors on all publications from their laboratories, Mac insisted that he should only be an author if he contributed intellectually or experimentally to the information being published, a practice that is now exercised by most scientists," said Fischetti, who worked in McCarty's lab as a research technician from 1962 to 1967. "He is truly a scientist's scientist."