Ray J. Wu, Cornell University professor of molecular biology and genetics, who was widely recognized as one of the fathers of genetic engineering and who developed and sought to feed the world with a higher yielding rice that resists insects and drought, died of cardiac arrest in Ithaca, Feb. 10.
In 1970, Wu developed the first method for sequencing DNA and some of the fundamental tools for DNA cloning (sequencing involves determining the base sequence in a DNA molecule). After several innovative modifications by other scientists to greatly speed up the process, the same basic DNA sequencing strategy is being used today. The utilization of this strategy has led to the DNA sequence determination of the rice and human genomes, among other organisms – helping scientists to understand different genetic traits.
Born in China and educated in the United States, Wu was a scientific adviser to the governments of both China and Taiwan. As such, he exerted great influence on U.S.-Chinese cooperation in biological science and education.
At Cornell in 1999, he made a gift of $500,000 to establish the Ray Wu Graduate Fellowship in Molecular Biology and Genetics to support a first-year graduate student. He funded the gift over the next five years to create a permanent endowment to support one graduate student each year in the field of molecular biology and genetics.
In the mid-1990s, Wu and his group genetically engineered and successfully field-tested pest-resistant rice plants, marking the first time that useful genes were successfully transferred from a dicotyledonous plant (potato) to a monocotyledonous plant – in this case, rice. The potato genes caused the rice plants to produce a protein that interferes with the attacking insects’ digestive process. Thus, insects such as the pink stem borer eat less and grow less quickly, and plant damage is reduced. A barley gene enabled rice plants to produce a protein that makes them salt- and drought-resistant, so that they grow in saline conditions and recover quickly from dry conditions.
In 2002 Wu and his colleagues demonstrated another strategy to genetically engineer rice and other crops to make them more tolerant of drought, salt and temperature stresses, while bolstering yields. The study showed stress tolerance by introducing the genes for trehalose (sugar) synthesis into Indica rice varieties, which represent 80 percent of rice grown worldwide and include the widely eaten basmati rice. Wu and his colleagues said the newer strategy could work for Japonica rice varieties and other crops, including corn, wheat, millet, soybeans and sugar cane.
Wu joined the Cornell faculty in 1966 as an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, became a professor in 1972, and in 2004 was named a Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor Molecular Biology and Genetics. He served as department chair (1976-1978) in Cornell’s Section of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty, he was a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow, working under Efraim Racker at the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York. He also has worked at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a National Science Foundation Senior Fellow at the Medical Research Council Laboratory in Cambridge, England, and a visiting associate professor in the Department of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While on sabbatical leave from Cornell in 1989, Wu was director of the Institute of Molecular Biology of Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. He also served as an honorary professor and later as an adjunct professor at Peking University.
Wu founded the China-United States Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Examination and Application program which, from 1982 to 1989, brought over 400 of the top Chinese students to the United States for graduate training and produced more than 100 faculty members in major universities or key members in industry. These scientists, with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, formed the Ray Wu Society to promote life sciences frontiers.
Among other advisory roles to both the Chinese and Taiwanese governments, Wu was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Molecular Biology, the Institute of Bioagricultural Sciences of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing, and he held several honorary professorships at Chinese universities and research institutes.
Wu was elected a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 2003 and was elected a fellow in the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was given the prestigious Frank Annunzio Award in Science and Technology in 2002, which is presented by the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation.
He served as: scientific adviser to the China National Center for Biotechnology Development; chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Institute of BioAgricultural Sciences, Taiwan; chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Transgenic Plant Program, National Science Council, Taiwan; and chairman of the board of scientific advisers of the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.
Born in Beijing on Aug. 14, 1928, Wu came to the United States in 1948 at the urging of his father, who at the time was in the United States attending meetings. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Alabama in 1950 and then earned his doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. Wu became a naturalized United States citizen in February 1961.
He is survived by his wife, Christina, and two children, Albert Wu, M.D., and Alice Wu, M.S., and three grandchildren.
“Ladybugs serve as a major form of biological pest control,” said Molly Trufant, a graduate student in biology education at Ithaca College. “Without them, we’d all be at a loss, crop farmers and recreational gardeners, alike.”
