a conversation with martin chalfie - watching life in real time - interview

8/14/2019 A Conversation With Martin Chalfie - Watching Life in Real Time - Interview

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nversation With Martin Chalfie - Watching Life in Real Time - Interview - NYTimes.com

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eptember 22, 2009

CONVERSATION W ITH MARTIN CHALFIE

W atching Life in Real Timey CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Q. IS IT TRUE YOU SLEPT PAST THE PHONE CALL INFORMING YOU OF THE NOBEL PRIZE ?

A. Its true. You know, if youre fortunate enough to do good work, people do this terrible thing to you hey start saying, Hey, you might get the Nobel Prize. Then, when the first week in October rolls around,

you lose a little sleep.

Last October, I didnt sleep well the night before they announced the medicine prize. But no call came.They announce the chemistry prize two days later. Well, on that night, I heard this phone ringing in the

istance but assumed it was a neighbors. So I woke at 10 after 6 the next morning and assumed thehemistry prize had gone to someone else. I then opened my laptop and went to Nobelprize.org to see whhe schnook was whod gotten it. And there I saw my name along along with Osamu Shimomuras and

Roger Tsiens. I was the schnook! I woke my wife, Tulle: Its happened. She said, What? Have weverslept taking our daughter to school?

Then, the phone really started ringing. It was a reporter from The A.P. who said she was in front of ourpartment and wanted to get a picture of me. I said, Im in my pajamas. She said, Thats exactly thehoto I want. I said, But youre not going to get it.

Q. YOURE A BIOLOGIST. WERE YOU SURPRISED TO WIN THE CHEMISTRY NOBEL?

A. The prize was really for the molecule. In 1962, Osamu Shimomura discovered a protein in a jellyfish taused it to glow bright green. With colleagues, 30 years later, I was able to insert this G.F.P. gene intoacteria and make them turn green. Once we did that, it opened up the possibility of using G.F.P. as a kindf natural flashlight inside of animals and plants that allows us to see cells or parts of them. Roger Tsien

ook it all further by creating an entire palette of colors from G.F.P., which gives us tags that permit us towatch even more processes as they occur. The breakthrough is that we can now watch life in real time.

Q. HOW DID YOU FIRST COME TO STUDY G.F.P.?

A. I actually know the day I first heard about it. Thats because I have a piece of paper full of excited notesd taken April 25, 1989. We have a seminar series here and neurobiologist Paul Brehm was the invitedpeaker. In his introduction, he mentioned how Osamu Shimomura was studying this jellyfish that has arotein that gives off a green light when you shine ultraviolet on it.
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For a decade, I had been studying a transparent worm, the C. elegans . I immediately thought, if you couldut the G.F.P. gene into C. elegans, youd then be able to see biological processes in live animals. Untilhen, we had to kill them and prepare their tissues chemically to visualize proteins or active genes withinells. But this view of life was static: we wanted to watch the progression of events as cells change overime. I was so excited. For the rest of the Brehms lecture, I couldnt hear what he was saying. I keptantasizing about all the wonderful things we could do.

spent the next day trying to find out who else was working on G.F.P. Douglas Prasher, it turned out, wasrying to clone the DNA. We immediately agreed to work together. But then because of a series of

misunderstandings, we lost touch. He thought Id dropped out of science. In 1992, we reconnected, and amonth later, using DNA hed sent us, we had inserted the protein into E. coli, which turned green when wehined ultraviolet light on it. We were then able to do the same thing with C. elegans.

Q. HOW DID A NOBEL PRIZE CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

A. The main thing is that it turned me into someone who is listened to. People dont generally listen tocientists much. At the news conference Columbia gave the day we won, I stated I was immediately signingpetition of Nobel laureates supporting Barack Obama for president; this was only a few weeks before the

lection. A week earlier, no one would have cared who I was voting for.

But everything else is pretty much the same. Im the chair of a biology department, and I still have to findunding and space for students. I still have to write grants for my research, which get judged like anyonelses. No one at the N.I.H. goes, Oh, he has a Nobel, we should give him money.

Q. WHY DO YOU THINK THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MADE BIOLOGY RESEARCH ANMPORTANT PIECE OF THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE? DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION

THE W.P.A. HAD PEOPLE PAINT MURALS IN PUBLIC SPACES AND BUILD POST OFFICES.

A. Its because biological research is very labor intensive this is a jobs program. Theres also money foremodeling laboratories and buying new equipment, which creates jobs outside of academia. The dividendere is not pleasing public spaces but insights into biological functions, disease and agriculture. In my lab,

we didnt apply for stimulus money because our regular grant was up for renewal. It seemed grabby topply for both. But I know of three people in the department whose jobs were saved by the stimulus.

Q. GETTING BACK TO YOUR NOBEL, HOW DID YOU PREPARE FOR THE FORMAL CEREMONY INTOCKHOLM?

A. My friend Bob Horvitz, who got the medicine prize in 2002, tried to prepare me. He said, Youll go to aehearsal before the ceremony and theyll show you a video of Paul Nurse (the head of Rockefeller

University ) accepting his prize because they want to show you what not to do. Apparently, youre supposedo walk up to the king, accept your medal, shake his hand and bow to the king and to the electors. Then,you bow to the audience. Paul had done this, but when he got back to his chair, he lifted his arms la
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Rocky, and went, Yeeess! They apparently did not approve of this.

When we got to Stockholm, they didnt show us the Paul Nurse video. At the ceremony, after I bowed to theing, the electors and the audience, I saw my wife and daughter in the third row, and I blew them a kiss.

Later, at a reception, we met a Countess Alice who told us, In all the years Ive attended the ceremonies,ve never seen anyone do that! So now, I fear they may start showing my video as the example of what noto do.

Q. ON OCT. 5, THEY WILL START ANNOUNCING THE NAMES OF THE 2009 NOBELISTS. DO YOUHAVE ANY ADVICE FOR THEM?

A. The same advice I got: Enjoy it.

Every year, in the first week of October, a committee of dignitaries in Stockholm announces the NobelPrizes in the sciences. The winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last y ear were Osamu Shimomura,Roger Y. Tsien and Martin Chalfie for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein.With the aid of G.F.P., the committee said, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that

were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the bra in or how cancer cells spread.We spoke with Dr. Chalfie, 62, last month at his offices a t Columbia University, where he heads the

iological sciences department. An edited and condensed version of a three-hour interview follows.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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a conversation with martin chalfie - watching life in real time - interview

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