Maxine Singer

DNA, the molecule that carries all the genetic information for living things, has always been the focus of Maxine Singer's research. She helped decipher the human genetic code—the chemical language that DNA uses to create the proteins that keep our bodies going and growing. She has studied disease-related genes that actually jump from place to place in DNA. One of her special fields of research is recombinant DNA technology.

Recombinant DNA technology is the taking of DNA from one organism and splicing it into the genes of another organism. For example, people who suffer from diabetes cannot make a protein called insulin that helps the body digest sugars, so diabetics have to give themselves shots of insulin every day. But insulin is hard to synthesize in the laboratory. So scientists take the piece of human DNA that tells the body to make insulin and splice that gene into the DNA of bacteria. The bacteria then can make insulin, which is harvested and used by diabetics. Recombinant DNA technology is often used like this to give a trait of one living thing to another kind of living thing.

About Her Life

Born in 1931, Maxine Singer grew up in New York City. She was inspired to go into science by her high school chemistry teacher: "She wasn't very friendly, but she was a very good teacher," Singer said of her in an interview. Singer got further encouragement when she attended Swarthmore College, just outside Philadelphia, where she initially majored in chemistry but switched to biology. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the world of science was not especially welcoming to women, whether it was in academia or in industry. Things were different at Swarthmore. Singer had many women friends who were also science majors, and she recalls that they were treated as equals by both the faculty and their male classmates.

After graduating in 1952 Singer entered Yale University, where she earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1957. This was just four years after James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double-helical structure of DNA. Singer's professor at Yale advised her that the future of biochemistry was in nucleic acids—DNA and RNA—and that she should study them. Very few scientists in the United States were studying nucleic acids at that time. One of those few was Leon Heppel at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington, D.C. Singer's professor helped her get a job with Heppel as a postdoctoral researcher. This worked out well because her husband, a lawyer, had also found work in Washington. Though she intended to stay only a short time, her post-doc position evolved into a full-time senior research position, and she ended up staying at NIH until 1979. She then moved across town to the National Cancer Institute, where she stayed until she became president of the Carnegie Institution in 1988, a post she held through 2002. She still is very involved in research at the National Cancer Institute.

Many people have moral and safety concerns about recombinant DNA and other types of genetic engineering. Singer has always been concerned with these issues. At NIH she helped formulate the institute’s guidelines about how research in genetic engineering should be carried out. She continues to work for safe and ethical use of biotechnologies today.

For Further Reading on the Web

"Dr. Maxine Singer" — Excerpt from a 1992 interview with Singer at the "Winding Your Way through DNA" symposium, University of California, San Francisco. On the Access Excellence Web site of the National Health Museum.