Journalism of Courage
Beneath his serious steely looks and eagle set gaze is a man who frequently resorts to humour to explain his points to audiences. Meet Nobel Laureate Roger Tsien. As you hear him speak passionately about his research in the field of Discovery and Development of Green Fluorescent Protein,his deep knowledge on the subject is clearly evident. Tsien,a professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California,San Diego,was a speaker at the Honeywell Nobel Laureate Lecture Series,held at the College of Engineering Pune (COEP) on Tuesday and he left the audience spell bound with his talk on the amalgamation of engineering and biology to advance research for the betterment of mankind,and the arrest of diseases like cancer.
One of the most important areas of research include health care and renewable sources of energy. In fact,I think all engineers should learn biology so that they can work towards answering the many questions that biology poses, he said. Tsien,who spoke in detail on the topic ‘Engineering Molecules for Fun and Profit’,said that working on the synthesis of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) was a result of over 15 years of hard work. I particularly wanted to work in the field of cancer research as I believed that even if we kept failing in our quest to arrest the disease,some day we would come across something that everyone has overlooked. That will be the day of triumph over this disease, he adds.
Getting a little technical on the subject,Tsien said that they are working on novel amplifying mechanisms that will be used to home in on the diseased tissues. Chemotherapy drugs will be able to gain more efficacy when these activable cell penetrating peptides (ACPP) will show the fluorescent highlighted parts to the surgeons thereby showing them what part of the peripheral damaged nerves to cut or not to cut.
As far as the work in research is concerned,Tsien is of the opinion that the answers to a lot of the questions that are left unanswered by biology lie in the symbiotic relationship of fields like Biology,Physics,mathematics and chemistry. It’s very important to be able to learn more about various maladies that plague mankind. The first step towards conquering these diseases is to gain more knowledge about them. That is where these kind of associations become important, he said.
