The Contributions of Margaret Dayhoff and Rebecca Lancefield in Bioinformatics

Rebecca Lancefield

Rebecca Lancefield is famous scientists and is known in the scientific world for developing a classification of bacterial streptococcus. She was nicknamed laboratory in the Rockefeller institute of medical research. While in the university, she carried out a research that lasted for about six decades and at long last identified over fifty types of streptococcus bacteria. She used the knowledge she gained from the large family of streptococcus bacteria to learn more about pathogenesis and immunity of the bacterial of its inflictions which range from scarlet fever, sore throats, and rheumatic fever to kidney and heart disease (De Toit et al., 460).

World War I and Rheumatic Fever

During World War I, she participated in a project at Rockefeller University which was meant to find out if distinct types of streptococci could be isolated from the soldiers in a Texas epidemic such that there could be a production of serum that could prevent infection. Within a year into the project, Lancefield and her colleagues published a report which incorporated the four types of streptococcus bacteria. She also provided some useful and very important information about rheumatic fever. Before the World War I, most physicians had suspicions that streptococcus was the root cause to rheumatic fever. She used precipitin test as her major tool in classifying the bacteria. After a series of attempts to classify the bacteria, Lancefield was able to discover two different antigens on the walls of those streptococci carbohydrate or polysaccharide (De Toit et al, 477). Before her death, Lancefield had discovered different aspects of streptococcus and its constituents.

Professor Margaret Dayhoff

Professor Margaret Dayhoff is also known as the founder of bioinformatics. She applied computational techniques and mathematics in sequencing of nucleic acid and proteins. She also established the first publicly available database that is used for research in that field. During her doctorate studies in quantum chemistry in Columbia University, she carried out a research where she pioneered the use of data processing machines and punch cards in calculating the resonance energies of various polycyclic organic molecules (Bhatt et al., 5).

Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure

In 1961, Dayhoff began the process of developing a tool to assist protein chemists to determine amino acids sequences. In 1965, she initiated the first ever collection of protein sequence. She made a publication known as atlas of protein sequence and structure. In 1980, she made the available over telephone network for free. Her greatest contributions to the computer programming of protein sequencing is when she invented a single-letter code for amino acids. Amino acids had previously been coded using three letters. The single-letter code helped in reducing the size of data files that are used to describe amino acids sequence in proteins (Bhatt et al., 14). Unfortunately, Dayhoff died before bioinformatics could be recognized as a field on its own but her tools and methods are crucial to the design of many databases today. Her discovery of evolutionary trees on the basis of correlations between living organisms and proteins also played a great role in establishing that certain genes that are normally found in various body tissue cells are closely related to those found in many cancer cells.

Carl Woese

Carl Woese is famous American biophysicist and microbiologist. He became famous when he defined a new domain of life in 1977. He came up with the phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA. This is a technique pioneered by Woese and it revolutionized the discipline of microbiology (Cole & Tiedje, 241). Some of his discoveries include her work on the genetic code, discovery of the third domain and evolution of primary cell types.

Connection Between Carl Woese and Margaret Dayhoff

Both Carl and Dayhoff discovered genetic code and amino acids code respectively. This connection between the two originates from the fact that they both obtained mathematics degrees in the university.

Works cited

Bhatt, Vaibhav D., Monika Patel, and Chaitanya G. Joshi. “An Insight of Biological Databases Used in Bioinformatics.”Current trends in Bioinformatics: An Insight. Springer, Singapore, 2018. 3-25.

Cole, James R., and James M. Tiedje. ”History and impact of RDP: a legacy from Carl Woese to microbiology.” RNA biology11.3 (2014): 239-243.

du Toit, Maret, et al. ”The genus Streptococcus.” Lactic Acid Bacteria (2014): 457-505.