After the paper was written (but not yet published) and the results were presented, John Essigmann and John Groopman decided to celebrate...

John Essigmann shows the eight stereochemical possibilities for an aflatoxin-guanine adduct.

Jerry Wogan describes how aflatoxin was discovered and how he came to study it.

John Essigmann talks about an early approach to determining the adduct structure.

John Essigmann walks through the determination of the adduct structure from the NMR information.

Once the basic adduct structure had been elucidated, John met with George Büchi and the other authors to show them his results.

Jerry Wogan discusses the pros and cons of competing with other research groups.

At this point in his research, John Essigmann had isolated what he suspected was a DNA adduct ("Peak 1" in the notebook and timeline). However, it wasn't uniformly believed that his material was the adduct. He could have isolated AFB_2α, a metabolite of AFB₁, or the dihydrodiol. In this video, he describes a simple experiment that rules out both of those possibilities.

Jerry Wogan talks about his favorite aspect of research.

Once he arrived at MIT, John Essigmann wanted to work with Jerry Wogan. That turned out to be harder than he had originally anticipated.

John Essigmann talks about how he came to be at MIT.

This video builds on the information contained in "The Early Meeting with George Büchi." John Essigmann discusses alternative approaches to the formic acid hydrolysis method he developed, and why his method started "out of favor."

Jerry Wogan talks about his background and how he arrived at MIT.

John Essigmann discusses the difficulties of getting a good mass spectrum of the putative aflatoxin adduct.

John Essigmann talks about how he obtained the NMR spectrum of the adduct.

All the data was ready. The authors had to decide where to publish...

Bob Croy weighs in on the most important things to take into consideration when planning an experiment.

Bob Croy describes his favorite thing about doing research.

Bob Croy describes his least favorite thing about doing research.

Bob Croy talks about his background and how he came to be involved in the aflatoxin work at MIT.

Jerry Wogan enumerates some of the considerations that go into deciding when to publish a scientific manuscript.

Bob Croy tells the "Go for it all" skiing story that set the stage for many risky experiments, only some of which ended well.

John Essigmann describes his first meeting with George Büchi and their shared passion for skiing.

This is the continuation of "The Beginnings of a Collaboration." John Essigmann details the two important pieces of information that George Büchi gave him at the beginning of the collaboration between their labs.

Jerry Wogan describes the decision making process involved in research.

John Essigmann sets the stage for the serendipitous experiment that saved him months of work. The problem he was grappling with at the time was how he could go about isolating enough of the adduct (about 3-5 mg) to determine its structure using NMR and mass spectrometry.

John Essigmann tells the story of how a tiny mistake led him to a method that allowed isolation of large quantities of adduct at a time. This video is a continuation of "The Two Liter Problem: Part I."

Jerry Wogan talks about what it's like to collaborate in science and why collaborations like the one he undertook with George Büchi's lab for the aflatoxin work are useful.

Jerry Wogan defines the ubiquitous phrase "good science."

Jerry Wogan talks about what makes MIT a special place to do research.

John Essigmann had successfully reduced the pool of possible adduct structures down to two, the N⁷ and the N⁹ adducts. He needed to design an experiment that would distinguish between the two. He describes the solution in this video.

All aflatoxins are fluorescent. However, the material that John Essigmann isolated early in his research (Peak 1) was not fluorescent; as a result, he had to convince George Büchi that his material did in fact contain aflatoxin as he suspected. John tells the story of how he accomplished that, given Büchi's scientific standards.

John Essigmann's lab bench.

The text reads: "Hi Gang: This is one of the most amazing places I've ever been to in my life--everything's perfect! On our first day here, I skied the mountain the chair lift is on, the mountain across the valley and a third larger mountain--Bob+Paul: eat your hearts out. It's been snowing all day and I think there will be 2' of powder tomorrow--see you next week. John"

John Essigmann and the Croys prepare to ski down a trail.

A schematic of all the possible reactions of a hypothesized epoxide intermediate.