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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title>Mike Wigler :: DNA from the Beginning</title> <meta name="description" content="Biography of Mike Wigler from Concept 40: Living things share common genes, DNA from the Beginning" /> <link rel="preload" as="style" src="/css/main.css"> <link rel="preload" as="script" src="/js/swfobject.js"> <link rel="preload" as="script" src="/js/prototype-1.6.1.js"> <link href="/css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid+Serif' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/> <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid+Sans' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/swfobject.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/prototype-1.6.1.js"></script> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="content"> <div id="header"> <div class="rollover-home"> <a href="/" class="rollover-home" title="DNA from the Beginning Home"><span class="displace">Home</span></a> </div> </div>  <div id="content-container"> <h1><span> Concept 40</span> Living things share common genes.</h1> <div id="nav"> <ul> <li class="menu1"><a href="index.html" title="CONCEPT" ><span class="displace">CONCEPT</span></a></li> <li class="menu2"><a href="animation.html" title="ANIMATION"><span class="displace">ANIMATION</span></a></li> <li class="menu3"><a href="gallery.html" title="GALLERY"><span class="displace">GALLERY</span></a></li> <li class="menu4"><a href="av.html" title="VIDEO"><span class="displace">VIDEO</span></a></li> <li class="menu5"><a href="bio.html" title="BIO"><span class="displace">BIO</span></a></li> <li class="menu6"><a href="problem.html" title="PROBLEM"><span class="displace">PROBLEM</span></a></li> <li class="menu7"><a href="links.html" title="LINKS" ><span class="displace">LINKS</span></a></li> </ul> <br class="clearfloat" /> </div> <div id="bio"> <p><a href="/40/bio.html"><img src="/images/40/bio_wigler_thumb.jpg" alt="Mike Wigler" class="floatLeft" /> </a> <a href="/40/bio-2.html"><img src="/images/40/bio_bishop_thumb.jpg" alt="Mike Bishop" class="floatLeft" /></a> <a href="/40/bio-3.html"><img src="/images/40/bio_varmus_thumb.jpg" alt="Harold Varmus" class="floatLeft" /></a> <a href="/40/bio.html">Mike Wigler</a> and his group were among the first to clone and characterize human oncogenes. <a href="/40/bio-2.html">Mike Bishop</a> and <a href="/40/bio-3.html">Harold Varmus</a> worked out how retroviruses transform normal cells to cancerous ones.<br class="clearfloat" /></p> <div id="people-list"> <ul> <li><span class="small">Go to:</span></li> <li><a href="/40/bio-2.html">John Michael Bishop (1936-)</a></li> <li><a href="/40/bio-3.html">Harold Eliot Varmus (1939-)</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="bio-current2"> <h2>Mike Wigler (1947-)</h2> </div> <br class="clearfloat" /> <div id="border"></div> <img src="/images/40/40bio.jpg" alt="Mike Wigler" class="floatRight" /> <p>Boredom with the suburbs may have been responsible for Mike Wigler's career as a scientist. Before his family moved from the Bronx, he loved to play baseball with friends or capture snakes in the park. </p> <p>"I was very unhappy leaving the city," Wigler recalled, "because there are a lot of parks in the city and kids play in them. We came out to the suburbs, where theoretically there's more nature, but there were very few parks and kids didn't play outside."</p> <p>Wigler channeled his boredom into his studies and he began studying chemistry in the fifth grade. "The precipitating event was I wanted to build a rocket ship, and I needed to know about fuel and oxidation/reduction. Basically, I wanted to make explosions."</p> <p>His plan was thwarted by his father, a high school chemistry teacher, who refused to bring home anything dangerous. Wigler's interest in chemistry shifted to math and physics before college and he went off to <a href = "http://www.princeton.edu">Princeton</a> to major in mathematics.</p> <p>At Princeton, Wigler excelled in his classes and he started enrolling in graduate level classes during his sophomore year. During a leave of absence he spent at his parents' house, Wigler decided to leave mathematics and go to medical school to devote his life to helping people.</p> <p>"Math has very little social relevance," Wigler explained in <i>Natural Obsessions</i>, a book about the search for cancer genes. "In the long run it's useful to society, but in the short run math is a more autistic activity. I wanted to do something with my life that might be socially useful."</p> <p>Asked why he didn't finish medical school at <a href = "http://www.rutgers.edu/">Rutgers</a>, Wigler joyously replied "because I flunked out!" But in reality Wigler's mind was wandering again. Instead of planning explosions, he played tournament chess. Eventually he was given another leave of absence.</p> <p>Perusing the <a href = "http://www.nyt.com/">New York Times</a> "help wanted" section, Wigler found an ad for a lab technician at <a href = "http://www.columbia.edu/">Columbia University</a> with Bernie Weinstein. "I wasn't what he was looking for, but he created a position and hired me part-time. I was there to play, I guess, until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life."</p> <p>Weinstein was interested in cancer and studied chemical carcinogens that altered DNA. Trained in mathematics, and imbued with the arrogance that those in the profession have toward biologists, Wigler thought the approach was futile. "It was clear to me that if things that caused cancer were mutagens, then cancer was a disease of mutation. To solve cancer - which seemed to me to be an interesting problem to work on - one would have to develop genetic tools."</p> <p>Wigler began to develop these genetic tools as a graduate student under Richard Axel at Columbia. Wigler looked at how geneticists succeeded in transferring genes from one bacterium to another, and helped develop a system to do the same thing with mammalian cells. </p> <p>After he moved to <a href = "http://www.cshl.org">Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory</a> in 1979, Wigler's lab and others used this system to insert a human cancer gene into normal human cells. The normal cells turned cancerous, and the first human oncogenes were discovered.</p> <p>Wigler's lab still searches for new human oncogenes and studies the function of the genes in yeast and mammalian cells. When Wigler is not in the lab, he plays the piano - with no rhythm - or tries his hand at bridge.</p> <div id="factoid-bio"> <img src="/images/general/factoid.gif" alt="factoid" class="factoid-image" /> <img src="/images/general/didyouknow.jpg" alt="Did you know ?" /> <p>Mike Wigler dropped out of college for a semester to regroup at his parents' house before deciding to become a scientist.</p> <img src="/images/general/hmmm.jpg" alt="Hmmm..." /> <p>Yeast have about 6,000 genes; humans have about 40,000. Where did we get the other genes? </p> </div> </div> </div> <br class="clearfloat" /> <div id="footer"> <ul> <li><a href="/">Home</a></li> <li><a href="/sitemap.html">Site Map</a></li> <li><a href="/scientists.html">Scientists</a></li> <li><a href="/glossary.html">Glossary</a></li> <li><a href="/feedback.html">Feedback</a></li> <li><a href="/awards.html">Awards</a></li> <li><a href="/credits.html">Credits</a></li> <li><a href="http://blogs.dnalc.org/dnaftb/" style="background-image:none;">Blog</a></li> </ul> <p> Funded by <a href="http://macyfoundation.org">The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation</a><br /> © 2002 - 2011, <a href="http://www.dnalc.org/"> DNA Learning Center</a>, <a href="https://www.cshl.edu/">Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory</a>. All rights reserved. </p> </div>  </div> <div id="sidebar"> <div id="search" > <form method="get" action="/search"> <div class="fieldHolder1"> <input type="search" id="q" name="q" placeholder="Search" onclick="this.value=''" value="" /> <img style="background-color:#9C0;" src="/images/general/search_icon.jpg" alt="Search" onclick="document.forms[0].submit()" /> </div> </form> </div>  <div id="sidebar"> <ul class="menu-side" > <li class="section1"><a href="/1/index.html" title="Classical Genetics"><span class="displace">CLASSICAL GENETICS</span></a></li> <li class="section2" style="margin-bottom: 3px;"><a href="/15/index.html" title="Molecules of Genetics"><span class="displace">MOLECULES OF GENETICS</span></a></li>  </ul> <ul class="sections-side sections-side3a" style="padding-top: 56px;" > <li ><a href="/29/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/29-thumb-sm.png" alt="29." />DNA is packaged in a chromosome.</a></li> <li ><a href="/30/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/30-thumb-sm.png" alt="30." />Higher cells incorporate an ancient chromosome.</a></li> <li ><a href="/31/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/31-thumb-sm.png" alt="31." />Some DNA does not encode protein.</a></li> <li ><a href="/32/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/32-thumb-sm.png" alt="32." />Some DNA can jump.</a></li> <li ><a href="/33/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/33-thumb-sm.png" alt="33." />Genes can be turned on and off.</a></li> <li ><a href="/34/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/34-thumb-sm.png" alt="34." />Genes can be moved between species.</a></li> <li ><a href="/35/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/35-thumb-sm.png" alt="35." />DNA responds to signals from outside the cell.</a></li> <li ><a href="/36/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/36-thumb-sm.png" alt="36." />Different genes are active in different kinds of cells.</a></li> <li ><a href="/37/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/37-thumb-sm.png" alt="37." />Master genes control basic body plans.</a></li> <li ><a href="/38/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/38-thumb-sm.png" alt="38." />Development balances cell growth and death.</a></li> <li ><a href="/39/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/39-thumb-sm.png" alt="39." />A genome is an entire set of genes.</a></li> <li ><a class="concept-highlight" href="/40/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/40-thumb-sm.png" alt="40." />Living things share common genes.</a></li> <li style="border-bottom: 1px solid #669;"><a href="/41/"><img src="/images/thumbnails/41-thumb-sm.png" alt="41." />DNA is only the beginning for understanding the human genome.</a></li> </ul> </div>  </div>  <br class="clearfloat" /> </div>  <script type="text/javascript"> Event.observe(window, 'load', function() { var uri = '/40/bio.html'; uri = uri.replace(/-\d/,''); $('nav').down().descendants().each(function(s) { if (s.nodeName == 'A') { if (s.href.match(uri)) { s.addClassName('current'); throw $break; } } }); }); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-1818773-10']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = 'https://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script>  <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-K6EHFCRJBP"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-K6EHFCRJBP'); </script> </body> </html>