For a long time I have given lectures on genetics. About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained the Jacob-Monod mechanism of gene regulation, students perceived these names as belonging with the names of Pasteur, Einstein and other famous scientists who lived and worked many years ago. How do you yourself feel in the role of a living classic?
Franqois Jacob. Your description is that of a fossil. Yet I have always been more interested in the future than in the past. More specially, I want to see how regulatory circuits in higher organisms, and especially in embryonic development, will turn out. Our prediction with Monod was that regulation of protein synthesis in development would operate on transcription, via complex networks of regulatory proteins. This seems to be the case.
V.R. I remember that in the era before 1965, the authority of the future Nobel Prize Winners was higher abroad than in France. You had 2-3 rooms in the famous attic of the old Pasteur Institute building equipped rather modestly. After receiving the Nobel Prize, the new Molecular Biology building was constructed. Does the new scientific generation still keep the old spirit of cooperation and friendship that existed among the laboratories of Jacob, Monod and Lwoff?