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Vita
A Tempo for Life
His office in the back of the lab has room for a desk, a couple of
filing cabinets, not much else.
There's a blackboard covered with half-erased scribbles - drawings of
evolutionary trees,
remnants of discussions about how a piece of DNA changed over time.
Fliers taped to filing
cabinets hint at how he likes to spend his free nights, playing piano at
local clubs.
Clyde Hutchison, professor of microbiology, sits at his desk and talks
in a patient, steady voice about his love
of science and jazz.
A member of the National Academy of
Sciences, Hutchison has been quietly cultivating new ideas in
genetics since the late 1960s. Hutchison gives a low-key explanation of
these years of work, and he's quick to
mention names - others who've collaborated with him or contributed somehow.
The story starts in 1968, when Hutchison and Marshall Edgell had just arrived at Carolina as assistant
professors. They began using restriction enzymes, which are proteins
that cut
DNA at specific sites, to isolate parts of the DNA of the smallest-known
virus at the time, Phi-X174.
To Hutchison, "chopping up" Phi-X174 was the first step in figuring
out its
DNA sequence. The sequence, the arrangement of bases that make up a piece
of
DNA, controls the instructions it gives a cell. But back then, the
know-how to read this code was years away.
In 1975, Fred Sanger, a scientist in Cambridge, England, figured out
how to read the
DNA code. Eager to learn, Hutchison went on sabbatical in Sanger's lab.
During that rigorous year, Hutchison helped determine
the entire sequence of Phi-X174, the first time this had been done for
any organism.
Also on sabbatical there was Michael Smith, from the University of
British Columbia. In his own lab,
Smith had learned to make small pieces of artificial DNA. One day Smith
asked Hutchison how he could combine that technique with the sequencing
skills they had learned.
That triggered Hutchison's memory. In 1971, he and Edgell had figured
out how to change the code of a long
DNA strand by fusing it with a shorter piece that has a different
sequence. But they couldn't completely control
the changes they made because they couldn't manipulate the sequence of
the short pieces. But, as Hutchison had
reasoned in a paper, if someday they could make their own
DNA, they could use it to make any change they wanted in the genetic code.
Five years later, Smith's question reminded Hutchison that they
finally had
the missing knowledge. Smith's lab made the small DNA pieces, then sent
them to Hutchison, who inserted them at precise locations on
longer strands. After a few tries, they were successful, and in 1978
Hutchison, Edgell, and Smith published
the work. Though Hutchison was the lead author, Smith continued
developing and promoting the technique, called site-directed mutagenesis,
while Hutchison, as he puts it, "got involved
with other things." The technique, which makes gene therapy possible,
won Smith the 1993 Nobel prize in chemistry. Some
scientists were upset that Hutchison and Edgell weren't included. But
the Nobel committee never changes its
mind.
And Hutchison didn't take up science to win prizes. He decided he
wanted to be a scientist when he was
ten years old, going to work with his father, a physical chemist. He
liked his father's lab because "there were a lot of people there doing
weird stuff at all hours of the day and night."
At the same time, Hutchison, like a lot of kids his age, was learning
to play classical piano. By eighth grade he had grown to
hate it and had quit the lessons. In 1989 Hutchison began studying under
Ed Paolantonio, a teacher and jazz player in Durham.
"He was a student of someone named Lenny Tristano, who was a prominent
player and teacher in New York from the bebop
period," Hutchison says.
Hutchison has an assortment of fliers from the shows he's played with
various groups. They advertise concerts at a
Raleigh restaurant, The Angus Barn, and at Chapel Hill's now-defunct
hangouts, the Hardback Cafe and the Columbia
Street Bakery. He's also played the occasional wedding gig.
Hutchison explains that in jazz, "there's a common repertoire of
standards that everyone should be able to play, but then
improvise some original material on those standards. So you can even
play with people that you've never met or talked to."
He says he likes this "curious blend of improvisation and structured
performance. "You're trying to create something new,
but within a very defined structure." He approaches his science the same
way.
Go to Hutchison's house, and the
first thing you notice is his six-foot grand piano, a Yamaha G3 that
takes up half the living room. The other half
is functional, no frills - a wall of bookshelves, a green-striped couch,
and a coffee table bearing a book of jazz photos.
Sometimes there's a public address system set up near the piano, for
practices with a singer - he hopes to start playing more
gigs soon.
There's recording equipment here too. He's recorded compact discs for
bands such as the Trout Band and Doxy's Kitchen.
"I bought the equipment and just read the manuals," he says with a shrug.
Hutchison's white-and-orange cat, Aliquot, wanders in from the
yard. His name is a Latin laboratory term that roughly
means "equal parts." Follow Aliquot to the kitchen and you'll
find another full bookshelf and a small Fender Rhodes electric
piano. Not much food though, since Hutchison almost never eats at home.
He spends much of his time guiding the work of the ten students,
fellows, and technicians who work in his lab. Right now
he's on sabbatical at The Institute for Genomic
Research in Maryland, studying a bacteria called
mycoplasma
genitalium. Hutchison says he hopes the sabbatical will give him
the chance to do more hands-on work in the lab. Which of course is where
he started.
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