Rattibha

Pim Huis in ’t Veld

12 Tweets 9 reads Jan 20, 2022

292444 (!) citations for this 1970 paper by Ulrich Leammli. It describes how four building blocks of assembled T4-bacteriophage heads are cleaved. But of course the paper is known for SDS-PAGE. After reading + citing it last year, I found some points quite interesting... 🧵[1/n]

The implementation of multi-well discontinuous SDS-PAGE was really useful to detect these post-translational changes in protein size.. Apparently many groups working on the same topic in those early years of molecular biology [2/n]

Laemmli in an interview in 2005 for a 🇨🇭newspaper:
„the method is only part of a figure legend in the article. Already at that time, I was proud to not have written a method paper. Developing the method was not a goal per se, I wanted to solve a biological problem” [3/n]

Unlike Nature papers nowadays, the writing is lively and accessible. Example sentence: “It has been pointed out to me by S. Brenner and A. Stretton that the cleavage point must occur at the N-terminal end of the P23 protein.”
That’s right, written in the first person. [4/n]

Laemmli is the only author. With a fresh PhD, he joined Aaron Klug’s lab as an @EMBO fellow. The acknowledgements start: “I thank Dr A. Klug for encouragement and facilities”. I guess this was not unusual at that time. [5/n]

Also acknowledged was Jacob Maizel, a real pioneer of protein separation on gels in the 60s in NY. He went for a sabbatical @MRC_LMB and arrived in Klug’s laboratory at the same time as Laemmli. “This system, to be described in detail elsewhere (UKL and JV Maizel) .... [6/n]

.... combines [..] disk-electrophoresis with [..] SDS to break down proteins into [..] polypeptide chains." Add the famous loading buffer the discontinuous pH to stack proteins before separation 🔥🔥 But the system was never described elsewhere. As Maizel recalls in 2000: [7/n]

In the ‘05 interview, Laemmli revealed that his postdoc in the 🇬🇧 avoided 🇨🇭 military service. Thirty of his potential comrades died in an avalanche! He also speculates that the paper would not have become gold-standard if he authored it as Lämmli, instead of Laemmli [8/n]

Here is Laemmli at the bench in 2018.. 77 or 78 years old (!)
Work by Laemmli and colleagues includes absolute classics. Such as this one with beautiful EM from Paulson and Laemmli, 1978. [9/n]

Here is Laemmli at the bench in 2018.. 77 or 78 years old (!) https://t.co/O4Wfc5bfxe

Work by Laemm...

I always enjoy science history 🧵🧵 If this is appreciated and you made it this far, please comment/follow etc. Might do a few more. See e.g. also: [10/n]
Sources:
10.1038/227680a0
10.1128/MMBR.67.1.86-156.2003
nzz.ch @retouschneider