Biologjia Online

Metabolism in the Era of Molecular Biology

Richard W. Hanson

Prologue
I have spent a lifetime in the area of intermediary metabolism and have seen it move from the center of biochemistry to the backwater of our science in a very short period, only to be re-discovered by a new generation of biologists. By 1970, the writing was on the wall for metabolism; it was largely considered a "mature area," lacking excitement; molecular biology was the area of the future. A sure sign of this was that graduate students in biochemistry (always first to spot the trends) almost never selected their thesis research in metabolism. The course in intermediary metabolism that I taught was dropped from the curriculum of our graduate education program; our students were expected to learn all they needed to know about metabolism as undergraduates before they attended graduate school. After all, as a graduate student once said to me, "the great problems in metabolic research have been solved." As one could easily predict, there is currently a shortage of scientists who truly understand metabolism and its regulation.

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