As a geneticist, he saw that the techniques of cloning and sequencing would open up new ways of approaching genetics and he turned to studying vertebrate genomics and has established the pufferfish genome as a powerful tool in genome analysis. Sydney Brenner, a giant in molecular biology, has just begun his second retirement, and now it looks like he'll have a shot at a third. The book is to be published later this year by Princeton University Press. Mr. Brenner, who was born in South Africa, spent the bulk of his 50-year career in Cambridge, England, where he directed the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. But the Molecular Sciences Institute's endowment runs out in July, and Mr. Brenner says he didn't want to have to raise more money to keep it going.
Science is one's hobby and one's work and one's pleasure.
Mr. Brenner is best known for his work in the 1960's, which established the existence of messenger RNA, which transmits information from DNA to proteins. That discovery won him the prestigious Lasker Award in 1971 for basic medical research. More recently, he has been part of a team studying vertebrate genome evolution using the Japanese puffer fish. Mr. Brenner won a second Lasker award last fall for work in medical sciences, honoring his achievements over a lifetime.