Remembering K. Gordon Lark

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Biology Department, with Gordon Lark newly recruited to be the first Chair. Last December, Gordon would have celebrated his 90th birthday, but he passed away in April 2020. Here I recount an event that embodies Gordon’s singular vision.

After becoming Chair, Gordon’s restless intellect led him to broadly explore all areas of biology to define where groundbreaking discoveries could be made. He generated novel ideas with the most creative experts he could find, and these deep intellectual engagements resulted in close friendships. These included eminent biologists in very different fields, such as Robert MacArthur, then at Princeton, and Martin Heisenberg at the University of Würzburg. I can still remember Gordon being shaken and intensely emotional when MacArthur passed away.

Gordon supported everything that enhanced research and unfailingly mentored younger faculty. He was driven to create an intellectual community of top-line researchers in Biological Science at Utah, which required sustained effort, a clear vision and a sense of purpose, talents that Gordon certainly had. This led to both tangible and intangible benefits that have had a long-lasting impact. Many of these research programs that were established at Utah have garnered both national and international recognition, including the Nobel Prize to Mario Capecchi. Elsewhere, Mario Capecchi and Elaine Ostrander (Gordon’s close collaborator with whom he established the field of dog genetics) have paid tribute to Gordon’s groundbreaking research.

Probably Gordon’s most lasting contributions are the intangible benefits of the interactive research-oriented community that he created. One specific event stands out to me. Gordon encouraged meetings that would showcase diverse research and facilitate new interactions across broad fields of biology. These regularly featured outside speakers, as well as research groups from elsewhere within the University. At a 1978 Research Retreat at Alta Lodge, Mark Skolnick, in the Utah Department of Biophysics, Ron Davis from Stanford (whom Gordon had tried to recruit to Utah a few years earlier) and David Botstein from MIT, were invited. Mark Skolnick trained in human genetics with Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Gordon recognized his unique creativity and had urged the Department of Biophysics to recruit him. Mark was trying to meet the challenge of mapping human disease genes, but it was unclear how this could be achieved. Type II restriction enzymes had only recently been discovered, and cloning technology was in its infancy.

Informal interactions at this retreat culminated in a remarkable closing lunch exchange. At the end of the first day of the conference, graduate students gathered at the bar. These were the first recruited to the department, including Kirk Thomas, Bob Smith and Mark Manning. Mark Skolnick’s students had presented their work on human disease genes, including hemochromatosis and breast cancer. Mark approached the graduate students at the bar and asked what work Ron Davis did. Kirk and Bob explained what restriction enzymes were and how Ron had used these to clone genes. They described how mutations at a restriction site might be detected. This set the stage for the lunch the following day; a discussion of human disease genes such as those that caused breast cancer and hemochromatosis became the focus of a lively discussion between John Roth, David Botstein, Ron Davis and Mark Skolnick. There was an “epiphany moment” where the idea of using restriction enzyme polymorphisms to map genes emerged. Everyone present at that table or listening close by who heard the conversation remembers the palpable excitement when the potential of a connection between restriction enzymes and mapping human disease genes was fully grasped.

In retrospect, the scientific consequences of that retreat lunch were extraordinary. This triggered a successful effort to recruit Ray White, leading to establishing the research institute in the Department of Human Genetics focused on mapping human disease genes. This Institute attracted many outstanding young researchers to Utah. A paper describing the basic idea was published, including Ron, David, Mark and Ray White as authors. Within a year, Mark Skolnick’s lab had identified their first restriction enzyme polymorphism; the definitive identification of the breast cancer genes by Mark’s group at Myriad Genetics, an event commented on by the New York Times can be traced back directly to that meeting.

This was just one of the notable scientific achievements that would not have happened without the intellectual community that Gordon worked tirelessly to achieve. No matter what he was doing, Gordon valued—and the scientific community benefitted and continues to benefit from—creative thinking.

Acknowledgements: I thank Kirk Thomas, Sandy Parkinson and Kevin Chas for helping me reconstruct events from long ago and for their editorial comments. Photo by Ben Okun.