page_title: Stanley Norman Cohen
section_title: Plasmid  pSC101
hierarchical_section_title: Stanley Norman Cohen / Career / Plasmid  pSC101
caption_attribution_description: Stanley Norman Cohen's Genetic Engineering Laboratory, 1973 - National American History Museum's Science in American Life exhibit.
context_page_description: Stanley Norman Cohen is an American geneticist and the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine. Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one living organism to another, a fundamental discovery for genetical engineering. Thousands of products have been developed on the basis of their work, including human growth hormone and hepatitis B vaccine. According to microbiologist Hugh McDevitt, "Cohen's DNA cloning technology has helped biologists in virtually every field". Without it, "the face of biomedicine and biotechnology would look totally different."
context_section_description: Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer made what would be one of the first genetic engineering experiments, in 1973. They demonstrated that the gene for frog ribosomal RNA could be transferred into bacterial cells and expressed by them. First they developed a chemical cell transformation method for Escherichia coli, then they constructed a plasmid, which would be the vector, called pSC101. This plasmid contained a single site for the restriction enzyme EcoRI and a gene for tetracycline resistance. The restriction enzyme EcoRI was used to cut the frog DNA into small segments. Next, the frog DNA fragments were combined with the plasmid, which had also been cleaved with EcoRI. The sticky ends of the DNA segments aligned themselves and were afterwards joined together using DNA ligase. The plasmids were then transferred into a strain of E. coli and plated onto a growth medium containing tetracycline. The cells that incorporated the plasmid carrying the tetracycline resistance gene grew and formed a colony of bacteria. Some of these colonies consisted of cells that carried the frog ribosomal RNA gene. The scientists then tested the colonies that formed after growth for the presence of frog ribosomal RNA.
caption: Stanley Norman Cohen's genetic engineering laboratory, 1973 - National Museum of American History
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