Arthur Beck Pardee (July 13, 1921 – February 24, 2019) was an American biochemist. One biographical portrait^[1] begins "Among the titans of science, Arthur Pardee is especially intriguing." There is hardly a field of molecular biology that is not affected by his work, which has advanced our understanding through theoretical predictions followed by insightful experiments. He is perhaps most famous for his part in the 'PaJaMo experiment' of the late 1950s, which greatly helped in the discovery ofmessenger RNA.^[2] He is also well known as the discoverer of therestriction point, in which a cell commits itself to certaincell cycle events during the G1 cycle. He did a great deal of work ontumor growth and regulation, with a particular focus on the role ofestrogen inhormone-responsive tumors. He is also well known for the development of various biochemical research techniques, most notably thedifferential display methodology, which is used in examining the activation of genes in cells. More recently he championed the acceptance and adoption of the conceptual review as a valuable approach to unearthing new knowledge from the enormous stores of information in the scientific literature. He died in February 2019 at the age of 97.^[3]

Pardee received his Bachelor of Science degree from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1942 while his Master's (1943) and PhD (1947) degrees were earned at theCalifornia Institute of Technology under the mentorship ofLinus Pauling, whom he considered to be the greatest chemist of the 20th century. Pardee did postdoctoral work at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison before returning to Berkeley as an instructor in biochemistry in 1949. In the 1950s, he was on a sabbatical withFrancois Jacob andJacques Monod in Paris. In 1961 Pardee became professor in biochemical sciences atPrinceton University while in 1975 he moved to Boston to become professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at theDana–Farber Cancer Institute andHarvard Medical School as well as chief for the division of cell growth and regulation at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. In 1981, Pardee became a founding member of theWorld Cultural Council.^[4] Pardee became an emeritus professor at Dana-Farber in 1992. He became a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1936,^[5] theNational Academy of Sciences in 1968,^[6] and theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2001.^[7]

While on sabbatical in Paris with Jacob and Monod, Pardee was involved in an experiment that became known as PaJaMo.^[8] The PaJaMo experiment, and later work with his studentMonica Riley showed that protein synthesis from a gene could begin almost as soon as the gene entered an E.coli cell. Prior hypotheses around the translation of genetic information into proteins had focused onribosomes, which turned over too slowly to enable the rapid synthesis seen in PaJaMo. On 15 April 1960, Jacob discussed the PaJaMo experiment's findings withSydney Brenner andFrancis Crick atKing's College, Cambridge. This caused Brenner and Crick to formulate on the spot the hypothesis that yet another RNA species existed,messenger RNA.^[9]

With his student Richard Yates, Pardee discovered that biosynthesis ofpyrimidine inEscherichia coli is subject tofeedback inhibition.^[10] This represented an important step in understandingmetabolic regulation. Feedback inhibition in glycolysis had been reported byZacharias Dische in an almost unknown paper a decade earlier.^[11][12]

In the early 1970s Pardee identified that the cell cycle has a point in the 'G1 phase' where the cell, as it were, 'commits' to moving to the 'S phase'. Pardee published on this so-called 'restriction point', sometimes called the 'Pardee point', in 1974.^[13]

Pardee's students includedAllan Wilson, who gained his PhD at Berkeley under Pardee's supervision in 1961.Monica Riley was also a Ph.D. student with Pardee and contributed to his studies of mRNA.

• [1] The 'PaJaMo' paper from theJournal of Molecular Biology.
• [2] The 1974 PNAS paper on the Restriction Point.
• [3]Portrait of an Editorial Board Member: Arthur B. Pardee in the journal Cell Cycle (1:2, 100-100, March/April 2002).
• [4] U.S. patents that list Arthur Pardee as an inventor.
• [5] interview: Science in the Blood, BioTechniques, 2006, vol. 41, no. 6, p. 659.
• [6] A landscape of pinnacles: The extraordinary career of Arthur PardeeJournal of Cellular Physiology.
• Arthur B. Pardee papers, 1949-2001. H MS c372. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.

• 1921 births
• 2019 deaths
• American biochemists
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Founding members of the World Cultural Council
• University of California, Berkeley alumni
• California Institute of Technology alumni
• University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
• University of California, Berkeley faculty
• Harvard Medical School faculty
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Members of the National Academy of Medicine

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• Articles with hCards