Angela N. H. Creager

Angela N. H. Creager (born 1963) is an American biochemist and historian of science. She received in 2009 the Price/Webster Prize from the History of Science Society (HSS) and served for two academic years from 2014 to 2015 as the president of the HSS. She was elected in 2008 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2020 a Member of the American Philosophical Society.

Quotes

The 1940s and 1950s were marked by intense debates over the origin of drug resistance in microbes. ... Antibiotic resistance became a key issue among those disputing physiological (usually termed ‘adaptationist’) vs. genetic (mutation and selection) explanations of variation in bacteria. Postwar developments connected with the Lysenko affair gave this debate a new political valence.
Proponents of the neo-Darwinian synthesis weighed in with support for the genetic theory. However, certain features of drug resistance seemed inexplicable by mutation and selection, particularly the phenomenon of ‘multiple resistance’—the emergence of resistance in a single strain against several unrelated antibiotics. In the late 1950s, Tsutomu Watanabe and his collaborators solved this puzzle by determining that resistance could be conferred by cytoplasmic resistance factors rather than chromosomal mutation. These R factors could carry resistance to many antibiotics and seemed able to promote their own dissemination in bacterial populations. In the end, the vindication of the genetic view of drug resistance was accompanied by a recasting of the ‘gene’ to include extrachromosomal hereditary units carried on viruses and plasmids.
- (March 2007) "Adaptation or selection? Old issues and new stakes in the postwar debates over bacterial drug resistance". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 159-190. DOI:10.1016/j.shpsc.2006.06.016.

Laboratory instructions and recipes are sometimes edited into books with a wide circulation. Even in the late twentieth century, publications of this nature remained influential. For example, protocols from a 1980 summer course on gene cloning at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory provided the basis for a bestselling laboratory manual by Tom Maniatis, Ed Fritsch and Joe Sambrook. Not only did the Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual become a standard reference for molecular biologists (commonly called the ‘bible’), but also its recipes and clear instructions made gene cloning and recombinant DNA technologies accessible to non-specialists. Consequently, this laboratory manual contributed to the rapid spread of genetic-engineering techniques throughout the life sciences, as well as in industry. As is often the case with how-to books, however, finding a way to update methods in this rapidly changing field posed a challenge, and various molecular-biology reference books had different ways of dealing with knowledge obsolescence. This paper explores the origins of this manual, its publication history, its reception and its rivals – as well as the more recent migration of such laboratory manuals to the Internet.
- (2020) . "Recipes for recombining DNA: A history of Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual". BJHS Themes Volume 5: Learning by the Book: Manuals and Handbooks in the History of Science: 225–243. DOI:10.1017/bjt.2020.5.

There are many reasons to revisit the history of research on tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), beginning with the fact that it was the first virus to be identified and so marks the start of the field of virology. However, not every original example of a new biological category becomes a well-studied object in its own right ... As virology took off in the early twentieth century, TMV did become one of the best-studied viruses and remained at the forefront of the field. It was used to elucidate basic knowledge about the nature of viruses and served as a model system in biomedicine as well as agriculture, where it had emerged. The fact that the first recognized virus came from plants—although animal viruses were rapidly identified—meant that virology was, from the outset, highly comparative
... Literature on the origins of molecular biology often privileges bacteriophage and the contributions of the Phage Group ... Yet early work with TMV inspired Max Delbrück and other early molecular biologists to take up the study of bacteriophages. Moreover, TMV itself became a prominent model system for understanding the molecular nature of heredity and the relationship between proteins and nucleic acids ... Notably, some of the main scientists involved in elucidating the double-helical structure of DNA were also studying TMV, which became a tool for cracking the genetic code.
- (2022) . "Tobacco mosaic virus and the history of molecular biology". Annual Review of Virology 9 (1): 39–55. DOI:10.1146/annurev-virology-100520-014520. (quote from p. 40)

The Life of a Virus (2002)

By 1950 the nature of the virus was no longer a mystery. Viruses were known to be macromolecules, genetic units, parasites that depend on their hosts for metabolism and reproduction. But a funny thing happened on the road to this knowledge. The viruses that most shaped this emerging portrait were not the most dangerous pathogens, but those examples, however innocuous to humans, that made good laboratory subjects. Researchers constructed general knowledge about viruses based on a few that, by reason of historical precedence or biological robustness, were intensively studied as representatives of the rest.
- The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965. University of Chicago Press. 2002. p. 1. ISBN 9780226120263. (398 pages)

Like ’’experimental system’’, ’’model system’’ is part of the biologist's idiom. The best-known model systems—standardized organisms such as the laboratory mouse and the fruit fly—are investigated by an entire community of biologists. Model systems become prototypes within which key biological questions are defined and resolved, useful precisely because they have already been so well studied. TMV was a model system in these respects, studied and discussed by a large contingent of biochemists, plant pathologists, and other agricultural and medical researchers ...
- p. 5

Life Atomic (2013)

Biochemists used radioisotopes to reveal the sequence of chemical reactions in metabolism. Physiologists followed the assimilation and turnover of key nutrients and tagged molecules such as insulin to track the movement and activity of hormones. Molecular biologists labeled nucleic acids with radioisotopes to follow the replication and expression of genes. Physicians utilized radioisotopes such as radioiodine and radiophosphorus to diagnose thyroid function and detect tumors. Ecologists profited as well, using phosphorus-32 to trace nutrient cycling through the living and nonliving parts of aquatic and terrestrial landscapes, giving concrete meaning to the notion of an ecosystem.
- Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine. University of Chicago Press. 2024. p. 4. ISBN 9780226017945. (512 pages; 1st edition 2013)

John Lawrence put radiophosphorus to work in cancer research, having induced lymphatic leukemia in an inbred mouse strain (Strong A) that was particularly susceptible to the implantation of tumors ... He and K. G. Scott found that these leukemic mice concentrated more radiophosphorus in their lymph glands and spleens than did healthy mice after both groups received tracer doses. ... This finding stoked hopes that radioisotopes would be selectively absorbed and localized in cancer patients, where they could serve to irradiate tumors.
- p. 35

Quotes about Angela N. H. Creager

In Life Atomic, Angela Creager weaves an engaging tale of the history of radioisotopes. Much of her material came from government documents from the Manhattan Project that were declassified during the Clinton administration. ...
Creager introduces the concepts and vocabulary of radioisotopes at a level that any reader can appreciate.
- Kenneth Krohn, (7 May 2014) "The power of the atom (review of Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine by Angela N. H. Creager)". Nature Medicine 20: 464. DOI:10.1038/nm.3555.

... one of the virtues of Creager's admirable book is that the attentive, even if scientifically uninformed, reader will learn a great deal, not only about these subjects but more generally about the character of biological research during the last two-thirds of the twentieth-century. By tracking the history of tmv from the applied realm of plant pathology through its acceptance as experimental model—a widely and conventionally accepted laboratory tool—Creager traces more general trends in the development of virology, genetics, and molecular biology. ... The power of Creager's method lies in how it underlines the dynamic set of relationships between ideas and experimental practice, between the laboratory and its sources of support.
- Charles E. Rosenberg, (Winter 2004) "review of The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965 by Angela N. H. Creager". Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (3): 485–486.

External links

Encyclopedic article on Angela N. H. Creager on Wikipedia