William Hayes and his Pallanza bomb shell

Abstract

The above lines from Hilaire Belloc's poem 'The Microbe' were quoted by the author of a paper in the Proceedings of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium of 1953. The author is none other than William Hayes who stands out as an example of scientists who have published very few papers in their career but whose works have revolutionised the prevailing notions and concepts and laid the foundations for monumental future developments. The classical work of William Hayes (1913- 1994) on bacterial conjugation and gene transfer carried out in the early 1950's triggered major advances in bacterial genetics and, in a broad sense, molecular biology itself. Within a brief span of three years Hayes made three pathbreaking discoveries: (i) demonstrated unidirectional transfer of genes from a donor cell to a recipient cell; (ii) discovered the first bacterial plasmid, namely, the F factor (sex factor) of Escherichia coli (E. coli); and (iii) independently discovered a High frequency recombinogenic (Hfr) E. coli strain which transferred chromosomal genes in an orderly manner and at high frequencies, enabling the realisation of a single, circular genetic map in E. coli. These advances have revolutionized the then prevalent notions in bacterial genetics and influenced generations of later microbial geneticists. In this brief article I will attempt to highlight the work of Hayes and its impact on bacterial genetics.