Robert Guthrie

Robert Guthrie ( born June 28, 1916 in Marionville, Missouri, † June 24, 1995 in Seattle, Washington) was an American microbiologist.

Life

Robert Guthrie was born in Marionville Missouri, grew up in Minnesota and was there in 1942 to see a doctor. In 1946 he received his doctorate in bacteriology at the University of Minnesota. In the first twelve years of his career he focused on cancer research. 1947 his second son was born with a mental disability, 1958 was also diagnosed with phenylketonuria at his niece, so that henceforth he taught his research on the early detection of this disease and the prevention of their damage. Guthrie died on 23 June 1995 at the age of 78 years. He was married 53 years with his wife, the couple had six children.

Work

The name Guthrie is inextricably linked with the development of the first mass screening for newborns. Caused by the mental disability of his second child to engage in a government organization for the disabled Guthrie learned the difficulties in the treatment of phenylketonuria, an inherited metabolic disorder characterized by inability of the organism to break down the amino acid phenylalanine to know. Previously, he had a lot of experience with bacterial inhibition assays collected during his cancer research. On this basis he developed in the sixties of the 20th century a test, show in which bacteria that are dependent on phenylalanine by their growth, the presence of this amino acid in a blood sample, called the Guthrie test.

In addition, it enables very simple implementation by the standard test for the performance of dried blood samples on filter paper (dry blood). If detected early, the disease can be prevented by an appropriate diet that had already been developed in 1953 by German physician Horst Bickel, treated and thus the development of a mental disability.