Sidney Brenner

Over the years, I have heard several variants of the Brenner/Zinder story. To summarize, Norton Zinder isolated the f2 phage which contains an RNA genome. Bearing in mind how little was known in 1960, when Zinder isolated bacteriophage f2; the discovery of RNA phages had great potential for use in the study of fundamental molecular processes, such as protein synthesis, including its initiation and termination. Clearly, there were good reasons why molecular biologists of the day, including Brenner, wanted to obtain their own samples of f2 phage. So, as the legend goes, Brenner, among others, requested a sample of