Pg33-34 Biologists Mtg Febbio04

Meeting report report

Biologists in the 21st century: from ideas to intellectual property The Royal Institution, 23 October 2003

The Henry Dale Prize is awarded annually under the auspices of The instability that then evolves to kill? by Mark Burgess Royal Institution and bestowed by the Kohn Foundation. It carries a Martin ended with some (Executive Editor) personal award of £10000 to an individual scientist of any discipline speculations on the contentious Downloaded from http://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article-pdf/26/1/33/6584/bio026010033.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 who has performed outstanding work on a biological topic by means field of language evolution. of an original multidisciplinary approach. Lexicostatistics, a mathematical tool for inferring the family tree of The winners in 2003 were Professors ideas of sequence space and fitness languages, was developed by the Christopher Lowe and Martin landscapes, and the need to allow linguist Morris Swadesh about the Nowak, who were invited to talk on for error-correcting enzymes and same time as the elucidation of ‘Biologists in the 21st century’. the specific mutation rate of the structure of DNA. Martin said Particularly, they were asked to con- genomes. Adaptation becomes pos- that language was a function of sider the questions: what is the defi- sible when the genome length is brain size and that the evolution of nition of a biologist in the modern less than the reciprocal of the language was “the most interesting world? can you still be a biologist if mutation rate per base. thing that has evolved in the last you spend your time designing Martin then turned to evolution six hundred million years … it mathematical models? or dealing in disease. HIV has a generation leads to a new mode of evolution, with patent lawyers? time of 2 days. Why does it take so cultural evolution, that is not Both brought a great deal of expe- long to kill? The answer seems to limited by genes.” rience to the task. Martin Nowak is be that it continually evolves until Building on Chomsky’s theories Professor of Mathematics and of the immune system collapses, of a universal grammar, he sug- Biology at Harvard University, and unable to keep up. gested that, assuming a generous founding Director of Harvard’s new Does the same thing happen in 108 sentences heard in childhood Chris Lowe, Ralph Kohn and Institute for Theoretical Biology. cancer? Is a tumour the development (one per second for 8 years), there Martin Nowak (Courtesy Chris Lowe is Professor of of an early event of chromosome “can be no more than 20 to 30 The Royal Institution) Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge and founding Director of the Institute of Biotechnology. His research has spanned microbiology, chemistry, electrochemistry, physics, electronics and chemical engineering. Martin Novak gave an overview of his work on evolutionary dynamics and mutation landscapes. Early on in the talk, we were gently piloted through the quasispecies equation for deterministic evolutionary dynamics: xi ajxjqji xi

This equation describes con- stant selection with mutation. This led on to an explanation of the

binary parameters programming latter can make individual spin-offs with which he had been for language learning.” proteins resonate. involved, he said. To say that multi- Christopher Lowe received BSc Advanced science and high tech- disciplinary science meant super- and PhD degrees in biochemistry nology are of little use unless one ficial was a mistake, and it was also from the University of Birmingham. can bring a product to market. Chris false to claim that the age of multi- His research programme covers Lowe spoke of the difficulties of disciplinary science died out with biopharmaceuticals, microbial dealing with the City, and the need Galileo or Newton. technology and biosensors, and for scientists to understand that cap- He closed with a quotation from has led to the establishment of six italism demands a return. Pasteur: “There are no such things as spin-out companies. His team is developing cheap applied sciences, only applications It is for biosensors that he is holographic biosensors that can of science.”

best known, and he gave a quick detect glucose, pathogens and just A question-and-answer session Downloaded from http://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article-pdf/26/1/33/6584/bio026010033.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 overview of affinity ligand design about anything else. Chris refused to followed, and those who hoped for using combinatorial chemistry accept that commercial applications a fight between the pure theoretical and particularly IgG-binding were somehow less seemly than and the practical were soon disap- ligands. Producing these molecules ‘pure science’ or that pure science pointed. Asked whose path was needs a combination of disciplines, was the necessary precursor to the better, both deferred to the a multi-disciplined approach applied science. other. There is room in biology and some advanced techniques. He also pointed out the impor- for the theoretician and the His laboratory is using plasmon tance of a multi-disciplinary inventor; biologists should not surface resonance and magnetic approach. This was amply demon- be afraid to dream, nor to get acoustic resonance sensors; the strated in the many commercial their hands dirty.