FEDERAL INTERAGENCY ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON 
RECOMBINANT DNA RESEARCH 
Minutes of the Eleventh Meeting 
Wednesday, February 27, 1980 
10:00 A.M. - 12:00 Noon 
National Institutes of Health 
Bethesda, Maryland 20205 
Dr. Fredrickson noted first that at its meeting on July 17, 1979, 
the Committee reviewed an NIH proposal for extending the NIH Guidelines 
to private-sector research on a voluntary basis. There have since been 
a number of developments on recombinant DNA research, the Guidelines, 
and industrial applications of recombinant DNA technology. At today's 
meeting, the intent was to review those developments and to consider 
possible Committee actions in the industrial applications area. Next, 
Dr. Fredrickson turned to the agenda items. (See Attachment A for list 
of attendees . ) 
Recombinant DNA Research Developments 
Recent Achievements Involving Recombinant DNA Technology . Dr. 
Fredrickson called on Dr. Maxine Singer, Acting Chief of the Laboratory 
of Biochemistry , Division of Cancer Biology and Diagnosis, National 
Cancer Institute, to review scientific advances. Dr. Singer noted that 
enormous progress has been made in hundreds of laboratories throughout 
the world, through recombinant DNA techniques coupled with techniques 
for determining the sequence of base pairs in DNA. 
There have been two major areas of special scientific achievement: 
(1) isolation and purification of small fragments of DNA in order to 
study the structure and function of genes; and (2) manipulation of DNA 
to obtain genetic expression--i .e. , the production of particular proteins. 
Concerning the first area. Dr. Singer briefly explained the structure 
of genes and the role of messenger RNA in the production of protein, 
distinguishing the mechanism in bacteria from that of more complex 
organisms. In bacteria the messenger RNA is transcribed from the DNA and 
then translated to produce the protein. In more complex organisms, RNA 
is transcribed from the DNA but goes through another step to produce a 
mature messenger RNA before being translated to protein. This step 
involves excision from the RNA of transcripts of "intervening sequences." 
Some genes have 17 or more intervening sequences, each of which must be 
spliced out with extreme accuracy. The list of genes with intervening 
sequences is growing larger every day. Among them are the genes for 
interferon, prolactin, insulin, and growth hormone. Intervening sequences 
have enormous implications for understanding how genes of complex organisms 
work, for evolution, and for risk assessment. 
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