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Site Map for The Stadtman Way; A Tale of Two Biochemists at NIH

  • Stadtman Thressa Campbell

    Thressa Campbell

    Born in 1920, the first of two siblings, Thressa Campbell was raised on a large farm in upstate New York, near Lake Ontario. In her recollection, this unspoiled land was carpeted with wild flowers in spring and covered with white snow in winter.

    Thressa's childhood home.
    Thressa's childhood home.

  • Stadtman Earl

    Earl Stadtman

    Earl Reece Stadtman was born in 1919, the fourth of six children. Earl's father was a life insurance salesman in Carrizozo, a small town in New Mexico. He had settled there after coming from Kansas as an engineer for a geological survey project.

    When Earl was ten, the family moved to San Bernardino, California. During his high school years, Earl became interested in debating and represented his school as leader of the debating team. "Earl—You will someday, no doubt, be a great orator and statesman," wrote one of his classmates. Indeed, Earl learned the virtues of logical analysis, efficient communication, and leadership, all of which he employed during his career as a scientist.

  • Stadtman Berkeley Marriage

    Marriage and Wartime Research

    In 1942, Earl volunteered for a job in the Navy but failed to pass the physical examination. Instead, he participated in a wartime project of mapping a route in Alaska known as the Alaskan-Canadian (Al-Can) Highway. Upon the completion of this survey in 1943, Earl returned to Berkeley and paid a visit to Horace A. Barker, for whom he had worked as a laboratory technician. Barker was at that time directing various war efforts in the department of food technology. Earl accepted an offer to work as principal investigator on a project studying the "Browning of Dried Apricots," the goal of which was to find a way of preventing dried fruits from deteriorating rapidly in the high temperatures of the South Pacific. It was a rewarding experience for him, since he was directly involved in research for the first time in his life and learned to use various experimental tools, including analytical spectroscopy, colorimetry, ion-exchange methodology, and column and paper chromatography.

  • Stadtman Berkeley Delft School

    The Heritage of the "Delft School" of Microbiology

    Studying under the supervision of Barker at Berkeley, Thressa and Earl were both influenced by the ideas of the "Delft School" of microbiology, a group of scientists who had pioneered the use of microorganisms in biochemical investigations. This school was led by Martinus W. Beijerinck, the first professor of microbiology at the Technical School in Delft in the Netherlands in 1885, and by Albert J. Kluyver, who succeeded Beijerinck in 1921.

  • Stadtman Biographies

    Biographies

    Anfinsen, Christian Boehmer (1916-1995) American biochemist

    Anfinsen was educated at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1943. Subsequently he taught at Harvard Medical School until 1950. He then moved to the National Heart Institute at Bethesda, Maryland, where he served as chief of the laboratory of cellular physiology. In 1963 Anfinsen joined the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, another institute within the National Institutes of Health, as chief of the laboratory of chemical biology. In 1982 he moved to the Johns Hopkins University as professor of biology.

  • Stadtman Follow Your Nose!

    Follow Your Nose!

    "Very often in the course of scientific experimentation a totally unexpected observation is made that is either unrelated or only incidentally related to the problem under immediate investigation. When it captures the attention of an alert, inquisitive mind, this observation may open the door for an entirely new study that is often more fruitful than that of the original design."

    • Stadtman Building 3 Biochemists

      Building 3 Biochemists

      In September 1950, Thressa and Earl arrived at the main campus of NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. At that time, NIH was rapidly becoming the premier research institute for biomedical science in the United States. On the one hand, its postwar transformation was well underway with the addition of new institutes and the expansion of the grants program. On the other, there was a serious effort to reorient NIH's focus from infectious to chronic diseases, from applied to basic research, and from short-term problem solving to long-range research planning. To be sure, NIH had not been, and would not become, an institution that could support and conduct scientific research for its own sake. The primary mission was always practical, i.e., to find ways to prevent, treat, and cure human diseases. Yet the NIH leadership in the 1950s was convinced that this goal would best be achieved by the production of scientific knowledge.

    • Stadtman Glossary

      Glossary

      Acetate

      A molecular ion, CH3COO-, derived from acetic acid.

    • Stadtman Anti-Nepotism Rules

      The Anti-Nepotism Rules

      In 1950, Thressa and Earl looked for academic positions in which they could both work at the same professional level. At that time, however, most universities had anti-nepotism rules that did not allow more than one family member to work in the same department. Intended to protect universities from favoritism, the rules often had the effect of discriminating against married women. No one seriously challenged the rules until the1960s, when the American Association of University Women began to protest their unfairness.

    • Stadtman NIH Couples

      NIH Couples

      With no official record of married couples who were employed as scientists at NIH, it is difficult to assess the extent, if any, to which the anti-nepotism rules were applied in Bethesda. Some scientific directors and laboratory chiefs, conscious of academic norms and practices, might have had reservations about hiring married couples. But it is certain, at least, that many married couples thrived at NIH. Some notable examples include NIH's first scientific couple, Jerald G. Wooley and Bernice E. Eddy, who married in 1938 when both worked as NIH bacteriologists. Julius and Florence White, who were married in 1932, came to NIH separately: Julius started his work at the National Cancer Institute in 1938, while Florence worked at the Bureau of Home Economics in the Department of Agriculture. In 1942, when Julius had to leave for military duty, Florence moved to NCI and took over his research in the laboratory. After Julius returned in 1945, Florence decided to take a break to stay home with their four children. She eventually returned to NCI in 1958 and resumed her scientific career. John and Elizabeth Weisburger arrived at NCI in 1949, both as research fellows, and worked together in the same laboratory for more than two decades. Within NCI, there were also several other marriages between scientists, technicians, and administrators on campus.

    • Stadtman Vitamin B12

      Working on the aerobic degradation of cholesterol in the early 1950s, Thressa set out to produce precursors of steroid hormones and cortisone. Unfortunately, cholesterol was degraded completely by the microorganism, so she could not detect any of the desired intermediate products to be used for hormone production. In the course of this unsuccessful endeavor, however, Thressa was able to identify cholesterol oxidase, an enzyme that oxidizes cholesterol. This enzyme was later used clinically for the measurement of cholesterol levels in blood.

    • Stadtman Research Summary

      Summary of the Stadtman's Research

      Vitamin B12 Biochemistry

      Signs of vitamin B12 deficiency in humans include fatigue, nausea, and weight loss. It can lead to pernicious anemia and neurological disorders. Investigating the role of vitamin B12 in metabolic processes is an essential step for understanding these clinical symptoms.

    • Stadtman Pioneer of Selenium Biochemistry

      Thressa Stadtman: Pioneer of Selenium Biochemistry

      In the early 1970s, Thressa's direction of research was suddenly changed by the unexpected, serendipitous observation that selenium was required for synthesis of a particular protein. At that time, Thressa was examining the biochemical properties of glycine reductase, the enzyme that catalyzes the reductive degradation of glycine, by isolating and purifying its protein components separately. With this study, she sought to explain a seemingly casual, but puzzling, finding in her laboratory: why did some batches of C. sticklandii, grown under conditions deemed to be optimal for the production of glycine reductase, exhibit virtually no ability to reduce glycine to acetate? 

    • Stadtman Fatty Acids

      How are Fatty Acids Made?

      When Earl decided to pursue a Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1945, his mentor Barker offered him an opportunity to study metabolic pathways for producing fatty acids in cells. Fatty acids are a class of chemical compounds containing a short or long "hydrocarbon chain" (composed only of hydrogens and carbons) and a "carboxylate group" (which gives acidic properties to fatty acids) at the end of the chain. Fatty acids are major building blocks of fats in the body.

    • Stadtman How to Control the Production of Amino Acids

      How to Control the Production of Amino Acids?

      In 1960, Earl went on sabbatical leave to Europe, and this turned out to be a fruitful research experience. Working in Feodor Lynen's laboratory in Munich for half a year, Earl discovered a biochemical reaction dependent upon the vitamin B12—coenzyme. Subsequently, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he collaborated with Georges Cohen and others on investigating the regulation of activities of aspartokinase, the enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of aspartate, an amino acid, to its phosphate derivative. At that time it was well known that this conversion was the first common step in a "branched pathway" that led to the biosynthesis of three different amino acids-lysine, threonine, and methionine.

    • Stadtman What is Aging

      What is Aging?

      In the late 1970s, Earl gradually shifted the focus of his research from the regulation of enzyme activities to that of protein turnover—the process by which damaged or inactivated proteins are removed from cells. How do the cells recognize malfunctioning enzymes? What are the signs of those "troubled" enzymes? In short, what governs the regulation of protein turnover? After studying the activity of normal or "healthy" enzymes for decades, Earl sought to understand how cells can selectively degrade certain proteins which are no longer needed because of changes in their environment. This problem led him to investigate the characteristics of "not-so-healthy" enzymes and their ultimate degradation into smaller pieces, such as amino acids. It was largely an unexplored area of research in biochemistry.

    • Stadtman Laboratory Settings

      Their Laboratories

      At NIH, Thressa and Earl have worked in the same building, sharing common facilities and instruments. Yet each has maintained her or his laboratory space separately as an independent researcher. A good example of a facility used in common is the anaerobic laboratory in which they have conducted various experiments in oxygen-free conditions. Standard pieces of equipment for biochemical research, such as the centrifuge and the Warburg apparatus, are found in each laboratory. Here is a selected list of facilities and instruments in their laboratories over time.

    • Stadtman Site Map

      Site Map for The Stadtman Way; A Tale of Two Biochemists at NIH

      1. Introduction
      2. Early Education
        1. Thressa Campbell

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