In This Issue:
NLM
Rewarded with Hammer
Rockefeller
Telemedicine Event
Frances
Howard Retirement
Chinese
Art Exhibit
Becky
Lyon Named Deputy Assoc. Director of Library Operations
Cravedi
Named Liaison Officer
2000
Budget Announced
Long
Range Plan Meeting
Son
of MEDLINEplus
 Rodbell
Archive Added To Profiles In Science
New
NLM Associates
Dr.
Bond Named Board Chair
Altemus
and Detweiler Win Award for "Frankenstein"
NLM
Honor Awards
Dr.
Cassedy Logs 50 Years
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Private Papers of Martin Rodbell Added to "Profiles In Science"
Web Site
Nobel Laureate is Third Scientist Added to
Site
In November 1969, two scientists sat in a bar in downtown
Washington, D.C. and developed a new theory to explain how cells
communicate. It was a theory that revolutionized molecular biology.
The two scientists, Martin Rodbell, a National Institutes of Health
(NIH) biochemist, and Oscar H. Hechter, a Northwestern University
steroid biochemist, borrowed the term "signal transduction" from
computer science and used it to describe how cells receive signals
and transmit them as information across the cell.
Dr. Martin Rodbell is the third scientist to be added to NLM's
Profiles in Science web site (http://www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov/),
the Library's online digital library site dedicated to the lives and
works of prominent 20th-century biomedical scientists.
"Thirty years later signal transduction is no longer merely a
theory; it has become one of the fundamental paradigms of molecular
biology in the 20th century," said Dr. Alexa McCray, who directs the
Profiles in Science project. The Nobel committee recognized the
significance of his contribution when in 1994 they awarded the Nobel
prize to Rodbell along with Dr. Alfred G. Gilman of the University
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
The son of a grocer, Rodbell was born in 1925 in Baltimore, a
city he proudly identified with throughout his life. A renaissance
man, Rodbell not only pursued biology, but his interest in French
existential literature. The scientist maintained his strong love of
literature often penning verses for important occasions.
Rodbell joined NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in
1956. Over the next 40 years he held research positions at several
other NIH institutes, the last being the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences in Chapel Hill, N.C.
In 1964, Rodbell published "The Metabolism of Isolated Fat
Cells," one of the most important papers of his career, in which he
showed how hormones affected individual cells. Until this time, most
endocrinologists studied hormone action only on whole tissues, which
were conglomerations of hundreds of millions of cells. Rodbell's
article became one of the most influential articles in endocrinology
of the 1960s and 1970s. Reflecting on his famous article in 1980,
Rodbell wrote, "This paper was a turning point in the direction of
my research career." In 1971, Rodbell published his discoveries on
the role of guanine nucleotide proteins (or G-proteins) in cellular
metabolism. He was able to show that GTP (guanine triphosphate), a
nucleotide, stimulated the activity of G- proteins in the cell. This
led Rodbell to identify the G-proteins as crucial cellular
components for transmitting information across the cell and for
maintaining cellular metabolism. Further research during the 1970s
and 1980s showed that the activity, or inactivity, of G- proteins in
cells are responsible for certain diseases, such as cholera, and
certain forms of cancer.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Rodbell became more philosophical
about his work and his understanding of the G-proteins. After
observing the research of other scientists, especially those of
Gilman (his 1994 co-winner), Rodbell believed that G-proteins
altered at the molecular level could become "programmable
messengers." He even used the language of cellular regulation to
describe modern society. As he declared in 1984, upon receiving the
prestigious Gairdner International Award, "Democracy or not, our
environment dictates that each of us must process the available
information in a manner that best fits our individual and societal
needs if we are to survive what is clearly a hostile
environment."
The new site shows off a variety of documents and includes
materials that span the various phases of Rodbell's life and career,
from a 1939 diary entry written on the brink of World War II to
video clips of his public lecture delivered just weeks before his
death in December 1998. Other documents include correspondence,
photographs, speeches and poems, laboratory notebooks, and
unpublished papers. Site visitors can, for example, read the
original poem Rodbell read before Carl Gustav, King of Sweden, upon
accepting the Nobel Prize.
Profiles in Science was launched in September of 1998. It is a
continuing project and the Library plans to announce each new
collection as it is added to the site. 
Photo: Dr. Martin Rodbell (l.) with fellow scientists (and
1988 Nobel Laureates) Dr. George H. Hitchings and Dr. Gertrude B.
Elion, at an October 1994 celebration of Rodbell's receiving the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. (Bernard Thomas photograph
reprinted with permission from The Durham (NC) Herald- Sun.)
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