In the C. elegans germ line nuclei that have incurred DNA damage are removed by apoptosis. This image shows that labeled nuclei are not more likely to be targeted for apoptosis.
History of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
It seems appropriate to record at this time the 36 year history of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics since it will cease to exist as such as of July 1993. The Department will be replaced by a larger administrative unit entitled "Molecular and Cellular Biology" with faculty totaling 44 drawn from units also participating in the reorganization of the biology program at UCD.
The Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics was born in the office of Vice President Harry Wellman on the Berkeley campus in 1955. At that time there existed in the College of Agriculture, UCB, a small department of Agricultural Biochemistry consisting of H.A. Barker, E.E. Conn, W.Z. Hassid and P.K. Stumpf (Chair). It was essentially a research unit with relatively light teaching loads. On returning to the Berkeley campus from a sabbatical leave (1954-1955), P.K. Stumpf was asked by Wellman to consider the possibility of organizing a biochemistry unit in the College of Agriculture on the Davis campus with a similar unit on the Berkeley campus, both of which would have teaching and research duties while the administration of these units would remain on the Berkeley campus. Stumpf's reply was that this type of organization was inefficient but that he would be willing to explore establishing an independent department on the Davis Campus. He asked both Barker and Hassid whether they were interested in the move but both colleagues, with a long and distinguished careers on the Berkeley campus, declined the invitation. He also asked E.E. Conn whether he would care to join Stumpf in a possible move to Davis. Conn agreed promptly and by 1956 plans began to gel. Fortunately a new building was being planned on the Davis campus, to be later named Hoagland Hall. Provost Stanley Freeborn made the decision to allocate the second floor west wing of the new building to the new Department of Agricultural Biochemistry. July 1, 1958 was the first fiscal year of the new Department but Hoagland Hall was not completed until February, 1959. In the meantime the department was housed in a single office in Haring Hall. In the reorganization of the new department an additional FTE was allocated and Lloyd Ingraham of the Western Regional Laboratory, USDA, was asked to join the new unit. The total UCD campus enrollment at that time was 2300 students, the town's population was 8300, and there were no stop lights in the community!
During the construction of Hoagland Hall, Stumpf was a frequent visitor of the Hoagland facility, checking out various aspects of the construction. On one occasion he noticed that the sign painter was about to paint on the door of the Department's office the name "Department of Agricultural Biochemistry." Stumpf decided at that point in time that the adjective "Agricultural" was not necessary and so advised the painter who accordingly painted on the door the "Department of Biochemistry." About a year later Stumpf, serving as Chair, heard rumors that another administrative unit was proposing the establishment of a Biophysics unit. He sent off a letter to Dean Fred Briggs of the College of Agriculture recommending strongly that it was entirely appropriate to expand the title of the department to the "Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics," its official title until it became the "Section of Biochemistry" in July 1992. It should be noted that in the late fifties and the early sixties administrative changes were easy to carry out. Indeed the appointment of Ingraham and a number of later appointments were based on sending out inquiries to leading biochemistry departments asking for recommendations for possible candidates for positions in the Department; lists were compiled by the small faculty, narrowed to a few candidates who were then asked to present a seminar. No advertisements in Science, etc. were required and the process proceeded smoothly to the final selection. In this way, appointments were made in the early sixties. Interestingly, five of the new appointments in the sixties were trained at the University of Wisconsin. Letters of inquiry to the Chair of Biochemistry at Wisconsin, a good friend of both Stumpf and Conn, always resulted in glowing letters of recommendations. Hence five faculty members from Wisconsin!
In February 1959, the research groups of Stumpf and Conn which had remained on the Berkeley campus, moved to the new quarters and thus department research and teaching activities were housed under one roof. In the meantime, the young Department obtained an NIH Graduate Training grant which permitted it to attract graduate students and postdoctorals at a rapid rate. Until its termination in 1979, this grant was a dominant factor in allowing the Department to build a national reputation. An equally important event was the appointment of Emil Mrak in 1969 to the new post of Chancellor of the Davis campus and the upgrading of the campus to a full scale university status. Mrak was very influential in having the department established on the Davis campus and was a strong supporter of its development throughout his entire term as chancellor.
Initially, the graduate program was associated with the Berkeley based Comparative Biochemistry Graduate Group largely because of an imbalance of biochemists on the Davis campus in the early sixties. Since the campus was growing rapidly during the middle sixties, the Davis graduate subgroup decided in 1968 to break away from the Berkeley group and thus in 1969 the Graduate School established its own Biochemistry Graduate group; its members comprised all qualified faculty on the campus.
By 1962 the Hoagland Hall facility became hopelessly inadequate with six faculty occupying space designed for four. Fortunately, the Department was assigned to occupy the top floor of the newly constructed Hutchison Hall in 1963. Once more the Department expanded with the appointment of seven new faculty from 1964 to 1969 (Table I) and once more it became painfully clear that new facilities would be necessary. Dr. Bruening and Dr. Toliver were housed in a laboratory in Hoagland Hall; Dr. Hedrick was in a small laboratory on the first floor of Hutchison Hall as was Dr. Ingraham's lab. Ingraham's office was in the basement of Hutchison Hall and the rest of the faculty was saturating the facilities on the top floor. All teaching laboratories were across the campus in the old Chemistry Building (now Young Hall). Chancellor Mrak, realizing the critical nature of the space problem, appointed Harry Lange (Entomology) and P.K. Stumpf to head up a building committee to oversee the development of a new building to be called Briggs Hall. Lange and Stumpf were able to obtain major federal support (Office of Education, NIH and NSF) to supplement state funds for its construction. For $10,290,000 the 120,000 square foot building was constructed during 1968-71. In October 1971 the Department moved into their new facilities of 49,698 square feet. The new Department of Biological Chemistry of the newly founded Medical School (with Ed Krebs as Chair) borrowed space for their faculty from our assigned space allocation while their own facilities were under construction. Other departments assigned to the building included Entomology, Genetics and Animal Physiology. When Krebs' group moved to their own labs Wildlife and Fisheries were assigned to their space by Dean Charles Hess.
A number of factors played important roles in the development of the Department:
- The faculty and support staff were an exceptionally stable group of people. Only four faculty members left the Department through its 35 year history. The Department was extremely fortunate in having a support staff of excellent quality which was both hard-working and devoted to the interests of the Department. Several had been with the department over 20 years and these include Leo Madsen (1959-90), Barbara Clover (1965 to present), Paul Jones (1969 to present) and Carolyn Borgnino (1969 to present).
- To establish the young Department in 1958 - in the shadows of the famous Berkeley department - several steps were taken. With the NIH training grant available, prominent biochemists were brought, often for their first visit, to the campus. Prior to their seminar they were (a) exposed to the pleasures of the Enology Department and (b) participated in a free-for-all preseminar hour with the students and faculty. (The enology visits were terminated in 1961 because of an increasing awareness on the part of the faculty that Enology was losing interest in the weekly tour and that some of the seminar speakers had a low tolerance for alcohol).
- As stated earlier initially graduate degrees were granted under the auspices of the Comparative Biochemistry Group in Berkeley with the Davis contingent functioning as a subgroup from 1958 until 1969 when the Davis Graduate School approved of a separate Biochemistry group on the Davis campus. Rather than limit the graduate degree in biochemistry only to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics as was done at UCB and other campuses, it was decided in 1958 that all properly qualified biochemists from a number of Davis departments were invited to participate not only in graduate training but also be involved in the administration of the graduate group. Thus as of 1958 to the present time, biochemists from such diverse departments as Agronomy, Vegetable Crops, Botany, Zoology, Microbiology, Food Science, Physiological Sciences (Vet School), and after 1969, several medical school departments contributed to the growth and strength of the biochemistry program on the Davis campus. Indeed, the format developed here has been adopted at Purdue and several other universities.
- The Shell Company Foundation awards began in 1961 when the Director of the Shell Laboratories in Modesto visited the Department. Arrangements were made for a yearly award by Shell to the Department, the funds to be used to improve the educational activities of the Department. In addition, in 1967 an annual Shell Lecture was initiated which was highly successful. All invited speakers were of Nobel prize caliber who interacted closely with students and faculty for several days. The Shell Award was discontinued in the mid-eighties because of a termination of funding by the Shell Foundation.
For a brief period the Stauffer Company made similar awards to the Department. An annual undergraduate award funded by the California Foundation for Biochemical Research supports promising undergraduates during the summer for research experience in a faculty's laboratory. The Swackhamer Award is given each year to an outstanding advanced graduate student with funds derived from monies made available as a memorial to Michael Swackhamer who died of bone cancer while a graduate student in the Department.
- Ever since 1968, the Department had a very successful undergraduate major in Biochemistry. In fact recent data indicate that the Davis major, on an annual basis, encompasses about 7% of all the undergraduate biochemistry majors in the country. In part this is due to an excellent undergraduate teaching curriculum initiated by E.E. Conn in 1968 in his highly successful beginning course in Biochemistry, the very successful Conn and Stumpf "Outlines of Biochemistry" (four editions plus the fifth edition with Roy Doi and George Bruening as additional co-authors), Segel's "Biochemical Calculations" (1968) and his excellent "Enzyme Kinetics" (1976). In addition, the reputation of the program was enhanced further by the recognition on the part of many graduate schools that students who graduated from the UCD Biochemistry major were their top graduate students.
In the spring of 1983 the Department celebrated its 26th year with a day long symposium.
At the end of the 1982-84 academic year, the Department experienced the loss of its most senior faculty member, Dr. Stumpf, through retirement. At this point it was decided that the Department should recruit a new chair from the outside. After a nation-wide search, Professor Don Carlson (Purdue) was appointed the new chair as of 1985; he was succeeded by Dr. Mark McNamee in 1990 who would then serve as the final chair of the Department. As the department completes its 35 years of service to the University, the original three faculty and its first appointee, Sterling Chaykin, are all emeriti members. The Department over its thirty-five years had provided a solid base for the successful growth of the new biochemistry program as it enters the 21st century.