QuestionDr. Saleeby:
My daughter is during a report on Strep Throat, Some of the questions she needs to find are When and who discovered strep throat. We have tried to search on the Internet but have had no success. Can you help please?
Thanks
Jeanne
AnswerJeanne,
I usually don't do homework questions but....
Rebecca Lansfield working at the Rockefeller Institute demonstrated in the 1930's that group A streptococci (S. pyogenes), was specific to humans and human disease, including pharyngitis ("strep throat"), scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, nephritis and impetigo.
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Obituary of Dr. McCarty who's lab Lansfield was working in when she discovered "strep":
Dr. McCarty was also a renowned leader in research on the biology and immunochemistry of the streptococcus bacterium and its role in producing rheumatic fever.
The work that Dr. McCarty did in the 1940's, with Dr. Oswald T. Avery and Dr. Colin MacLeod, strongly hinted that DNA was the stuff of life and paved the way for the field of molecular biology and genetic engineering. Their evidence came from experiments on the pneumococcus, at what was then known as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
Until the team's findings, published in 1944 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, scientists believed that genes must be made of protein, Dr. McCarty said. Although DNA had been identified in the mid-19th century, little was known about its biological activity, and most scientists believed that DNA lacked the necessary complexity to carry hereditary information.
"There is no question that the 1944 paper was the turning point in the concept that the chemistry of genes was DNA," said Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a former president of Rockefeller University. "It was the pivotal discovery of 20th-century biology."
The findings fell mostly on deaf ears for about a decade before playing a pivotal role in the determination in 1953 by Dr. James Watson and Dr. Francis H. C. Crick that the structure of DNA was a double helix, a discovery for which the two shared a Nobel Prize.
On the 50th anniversary of the Watson-Crick discovery, Dr. McCarty wrote in the scientific journal Nature that while he was "pleased to see such illuminating results," he was "not so pleased that they failed to cite our work as one reason for pursuing the structure of DNA."
Although Dr. McCarty and his teammates were nominated for a Nobel Prize, no member ever won one.
Dr. Alfred D. Hershey, a former director of the Carnegie Institute, once said that the trio's work attracted little attention in part because "they were just too modest; they refused to advertise."
Nobel Prize nominations are complicated, Dr. Lederberg said, "but everybody including the Nobel Committee will acknowledge that this was their most significant failure." He added, "There must be 20 to 25 prizes that have been awarded for work that depends on the team's seminal paper."
In 1994, Dr. McCarty received a Special Achievement in Medical Science award from the Lasker Foundation, which many consider the American equivalent of a Nobel Prize.
Maclyn McCarty was born in South Bend, Ind., on June 9, 1911. He graduated in 1933 from Stanford, where he majored in biochemistry. He went on to earn his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1937. He then trained in pediatrics for three years at Johns Hopkins with a special interest in infectious diseases.
In 1946, Dr. McCarty became head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology and Immunology at Rockefeller, and concentrated on rheumatic fever.
Scientists in his laboratory studied the streptococcal-rheumatic fever link from different perspectives. Through chemical analysis, his team identified the major components of the streptococcal cell-wall structure. Rebecca Lansfield, a member of his team, developed a standard classification system for streptococci now known by her name.
Dr. McCarty was a vice president of the university and physician in chief at the Rockefeller University Hospital. He was also board chairman of the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York.
In his later years, Dr. McCarty benefited from his own research when he developed anemia: genetic engineering techniques were used in making the drug he took to help produce more red cells.
Dr. McCarty's first marriage, to the former Anita Alleyen Davies, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, the former Marjorie Fried; two sons, Richard E., of Baltimore, and Colin Avery, of Clifton Park, N.Y.; a daughter, Dale Dinunzio of Bradenton, Fla.; eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Reference: http://www.laskerfoundation.org/awards/obits/mccartyobit.shtml
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Also this link discusses the Lansfield Groups and Hemolysis groups or classifications of Strep.: http://www.indstate.edu/thcme/micro/pdf/chapter8.pdf
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Hope all this is helpful.
JP Saleeby, MD
www.saleeby.net
