thebiostories

🌏 Available in: English | 한국어 피터 도허티, 모든 것을 이해하게 만든 그 이론 호주의 면역학자 피터 도허티(Peter Doherty) 는 이 나라에서 가장 유명한 과학자 중 한 명입니다 — 노벨상 수상자이자, 전 호주 올해의 인물이며, 요즘은 팬데믹과 감염병에 관해 대중에게 익숙한 목소리이기도 하죠. 하지만 그의 결정적인 과학적 기여, 즉 1996년 노벨 생리의학상 공동 수상으로 이어진 그 업적은, 이상하고 예상치 못한 실험 결과 하나가 어떻게 학계 전체의 기본 가정을 다시 생각하게 만드는지 — 그리고 그 재고찰이 어째서 훨씬 더 오래된 아이디어인 클론 선택 에 비추어봐야만 비로소 이해가 되었는지를 보여주는 아름다운 사례입니다. 생쥐 실험에서 나온 당혹스러운 결과 1970년대 초, 도허티는 캔버라의 존 커틴 의학연구소(John Curtin School of Medical Research) 에서 스위스 출신 면역학자 롤프 칭커나겔(Rolf Zinkernagel) 과 함께, 생쥐가 림프구성 맥락수막염 바이러스(LCMV)라는 바이러스와 싸우는 방식을 연구하고 있었습니다. 이들의 실험은 개념적으로는 단순했습니다 — 바이러스에 감염된 생쥐에서 세포독성 T세포라는 면역세포를 꺼내, 그 T세포가 실험 접시 안의 다른 바이러스 감염 세포들을 죽일 수 있는지 확인하는 것이었죠. 그런데 결과가 이상했습니다. T세포는 표적 세포가 **유전적 배경이 일치하는** 생쥐 — 구체적으로는 주조직적합복합체(MHC)라 불리는 단백질군이 일치하는 경우에만 감염된 표적 세포를 죽였습니다. 유전적으로 다른 계통의 생쥐에서 나온 감염 세포는, 똑같은 바이러스를 지니고 있었음에도 전혀 공격받지 않았어요. 다시 말해, 살상 T세포는 단순히 "이게 감염됐는가?"만 확인하는 게 아니었습니다. 동시에 "이 세포가 내 몸과 닮았는가?"도 확인하고 있었던 거예요. 바이러스 항원과 자기(self) MHC, 이 두 조건을 모두 ...

Donald Metcalf and the Mysterious Molecule That Made Blood Stem Cell Donation Possible On July 1st, 2011 — my first day at WEHI — the third person I met was Don Metcalf, right after Rosie the receptionist, who'd called my then-supervisor Ben to come pick me up. Ben introduced me to Don as a new postdoc from South Korea. Don asked me "whereabouts," meaning what region of South Korea I was from. I must have been so nervous that I completely misunderstood the question — as if he'd asked me where South Korea was — and I just repeated it back: "Where is South Korea?"Both Ben and Don burst out laughing. That was my first encounter with the man whose legacy this story is really about. Professor Donald Metcalf AC (26 February 1929 – 15 December 2014) was an outstanding medical researcher whose discovery of colony-stimulating factors has benefited more than 20 million people worldwide. The discovery that transformed the entire practice of stem cell transplanation Mo...

🌏 Available in: English | 한국어 Frank Macfarlane Burnet: The Nobel Prize Winner Who Shaped Modern Immunology  Quick Poll Who do you think is Australia's most influential scientist? Thanks for voting! Results reflect votes from your browser. If you asked most people to name a famous Australian scientist, you'd probably hear Howard Florey, the man behind penicillin's development into a usable drug. Maybe Peter Doherty, or more recently, Elizabeth Blackburn. Far fewer people would say Frank Macfarlane Burnet — and that's a genuine oversight, because his ideas quietly underpin almost everything modern medicine understands about the immune system. Burnet never discovered a single blockbuster drug. He did something arguably more foundational: he figured out how the immune system tells the difference between "you" and "not you." Understanding that distinction is the reason organ transplants can wor...

🌏 Available in: English | 한국어 Three Lasker Awards, One Address: The Institute That Keeps Producing Breakthroughs Walk down Flemington Road in Parkville, Melbourne, and you'll pass the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) — a building, my workplace, that has, remarkably, produced three Albert Lasker Award laureates across seven decades. The Lasker is often called "America's Nobels": of the roughly 90-plus scientists honored in its basic and clinical research categories, a striking number have gone on to win the Nobel Prize itself. When a Lasker is announced, the scientific community pays close attention, because history says a Nobel might not be far behind. Three of those Lasker laureates trace back to the same Melbourne institute. It's a pattern worth pausing on — not just as a trivia fact, but as a case study in how scientific culture compounds across generations. It made me want to understand what, exactly, this place has been doing ...