Interviewee: Walter Gilbert. Walter Gilbert talks about the messenger RNA experiment.

The three of us, Jim, Francois and I would do an experiment together, Francois generally holding a gigantic flask full of bacteria and shaking it violently, I holding a bottle of radioactive phosphorous, 20 millicuries, Jim holding a stopwatch, and then Jim would push the button, shout Go, I would pour the radioactive phosphorous into this big flask, Francois would shake it like mad, Jim would shout Stop, then end of twenty seconds, and we\'d pour this flask of radioactive material over a big fifty-gallon can full of ice and try to stop the growth of bacteria immediately, hopefully not splashing too much radioactive material around the room. We'd then spend hours harvesting the bacteria, spinning in a centrifuge down to collect the bacteria out of this large mass of radioactive material, put the radioactive material away to decay and not harm anybody, and then try to analyse the bacteria to see if we could see an RNA molecule labelled by this radioactive phosphorous in this very short pulse. And we did experiments in that for, throughout the summer. And from, starting in the early part of the summer we had evidence that there was such an intermediate and we published a Paper on that around December, December of that year.

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