Since winning the Nobel Prize, Mullis has been criticized in The New York Times for promoting ideas in areas in which he has no expertise.

Mullis has consulted on nucleic acid chemistry for multiple corporations.

Mullis has also invented a UV-sensitive plastic that changes color in response to light, and most recently has been working on an approach for mobilizing the immune system to neutralize invading pathogens and toxins, leading to the formation of his current venture, Altermune LLC.

The suggestion that Mullis was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in the PCR process has been contested by his co-workers at the time, who were embittered by his abrupt departure from Cetus.

In practice, credit has accrued to both the inventor and the company ( although not its individual workers ) in the form of a Nobel Prize and a $ 10, 000 Cetus bonus for Mullis and $ 300 million for Cetus when the company sold the patent to Roche Molecular Systems.

Mullis has said that the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas has hurt science.

Mullis has been described as an " impatient and impulsive researcher " who avoids lab work and instead thinks about research topics while driving and surfing.

As a result, some controversy surrounds the balance of credit that should be given to Mullis versus the team at Cetus.

Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years ; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis invented his prize-winning improvements to the polymerase chain reaction.

After leaving Cetus in 1986, Mullis served as director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc. in San Diego for two years.

In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corp. as a chemist.

Mullis took Cetus ' side in the case, and Khorana refused to testify for DuPont ; the jury upheld Mullis's patent in 1991.

Developed in 1983 by Kary Mullis, PCR is now a common and often indispensable technique used in medical and biological research labs for a variety of applications.

In 1993, Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Michael Smith for his work on PCR.

* 1983 — Kary Mullis invented " PCR " ( polymerase chain reaction ), an automated method for rapidly copying sequences of DNA.

Later, Kary Mullis and other investigators at Cetus Corporation discovered this enzyme could be used in the polymerase chain reaction ( PCR ) process for amplifying short segments of DNA, eliminating the need to add enzyme after every cycle of thermal denaturation of the DNA.

In 1993, Dr. Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with PCR.

In 1983 Kary Mullis devised a method for the in-vitro amplification of DNA, known as the polymerase chain reaction ( PCR ), which revolutionized the chemical processes used in the laboratory to manipulate it.

The 1993 prize credited Kary Mullis with the development of the polymerase chain reaction ( PCR ) method, a central technique in molecular biology which allowed for the amplification of specified DNA sequences.

Mullis ' co-workers at that time denied that he was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in the PCR process.

Kary Mullis received the Nobel Prize in 1993, the only one awarded for research performed at a biotechnology company.

Mullis returned to science at the encouragement of friend Thomas White, who later got Mullis a job with the biotechnology company Cetus Corporation of Emeryville, California.

In 1992, Mullis founded a business with the intent to sell pieces of jewelry containing the amplified DNA of deceased famous people like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.

That spring, according to Mullis, he was driving his vehicle late one night with his girlfriend, who was also a chemist at Cetus, when he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase, a technique which would allow a small strand of DNA to be copied almost an infinite number of times.

The anthropologist Paul Rabinow wrote a book on the history of the PCR method in 1996 ( entitled Making PCR ) in which he discussed whether or not Mullis " invented " PCR or " merely " came up with the concept of it.

In his 1998 autobiography, Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence supporting climate change and ozone depletion, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and asserted his belief in astrology.

For his part in the development of this process, Michael Smith later shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in October 1993 with Kary B. Mullis, who invented polymerase chain reaction.

Rabinow raised the issue of whether or not Mullis " invented " PCR or " merely " came up with the concept of it.

The Arboretum includes 75 acres ( 30 hectares ), and over 300 different species of trees, as well as a 2. 5 mile ( 4 km ) nature trail with a swamp, stream, and the 4 acre ( 1. 6 hectare ) Mullis Pond.

Mullis claims climate change and the HIV / AIDS connection are due to a conspiracy of environmentalists, government agencies and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence.

* The PCR ( polymerase chain reaction ) technique is developed by Kary Mullis, improving the researches on microbiology and genetics, also widely used in AIDS research.

Kary Banks Mullis ( born December 28, 1944 ) is a Nobel Prize winning American biochemist, author, and lecturer.

Mullis is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.

The county is represented by Chickamauga Republican Jeff Mullis in the State Senate.

However, other scientists have written that " the full potential PCR was not realized " until Mullis ' work in 1983, and that Mullis ' colleagues failed to see the potential of the technique when he presented it to them.

The improvements made by Mullis allowed PCR to become a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as " highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before P. C. R.

Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, on December 28, 1944.

As a child, Mullis recalls, he was interested in observing organisms in the countryside.

Mullis earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he got married and started a business.

Following his graduation, Mullis became a postdoctoral fellow in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical School, going on to complete two years of postdoctoral work in pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

After receiving his PhD, Mullis left science to write fiction, but quit and became a biochemist at a medical school in Kansas City.

Cetus took Mullis off his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time.

Mullis succeeded on demonstrating PCR December 16, 1983.

Saiki generated the needed data and authored the first paper to include utilization of the technique, while Mullis was still working on a paper that would describe PCR itself.