A change in direction

Eisenstein, Michael

doi:10.1038/nmeth0306-232

Classic Protocol
Published: March 2006

A change in direction

Michael Eisenstein

Nature Methods volume 3, page 232 (2006)Cite this article

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Many young scientists know the pain of unsuccessfully lobbying an advisor to back an 'impractical' experimental approach, and David Schwartz was no exception. While working on his senior research project at Harvard University in the late 1970s, he had conceived of a method for separating DNA molecules of unprecedented size by electrophoresis, using pulses of a second, shearing electric field to 'unfurl' DNA strands clumped up in the gel matrix, after which reintroduction of the first field could be used to continue size separation. Sadly, his advisor was having none of it. “He told me it was pure trash,” Schwartz recalls. “He said, 'Do you know more than Bruno Zimm?'”, referring to the chemist whose early work had inspired Schwartz's concept.

In fact, Schwartz continued his studies with Zimm, who proved hardly more receptive: “He looked at me, and he said, 'David, I don't see it.'” With a solid idea in his head—but few resources to make it into a reality—Schwartz jury-rigged a crude prototype device, and saw evidence that his concept might be sound. Personal circumstances brought Schwartz back to the east coast, where he essentially began his graduate studies from scratch with Charles Cantor at Columbia University. Cantor was supportive, giving Schwartz the resources to build and test his first 'pulsed-field gel electrophoresis' (PFGE) apparatus, which alternated its primary current with pulses of a transverse current—and the two were pleased to find that it worked remarkably well, generating diagonal band patterns that nevertheless revealed DNA separation in the megabase range¹.

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