telomeres - a conversation with carol w. greider - on winning a nobel prize in science

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nversation With Carol W. Greider - On Winning a Nobel Prize in Science - Interview - NYTimes.com

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October 13, 2009

A CONVERSATION WITH CAROL W. GREIDER

On W inning a Nobel Prize in Sciencey CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Q. IS IT TRUE THAT YOU WERE DOING LAUNDRY WHEN YOU GOT THAT EARLY MORNING CALLFROM STOCKHOLM?

A. Yes. I dont usually do the laundry so early in the morning, but I was already up, and there was all thisaundry staring at me. I was supposed to later meet two women friends to take our morning spin class.

People had speculated that sometime in the next five years, something like this might happen. And lastyear people said, Maybe, it will be, and it wasnt. Reuters had made this prediction that we might get ithis time. But I really didnt have any idea. Maybe it would never happen. There are importantundamental discoveries that never get prizes. After I got the call, I sent my friend an e-mail: Im sorry Iant spin right now. Ive won the Nobel Prize .

Q. DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO BE A BIOLOGIST?

A. My parents were scientists. But I wasnt the sort of child who did science fairs. One of the things I washinking about today is that as a kid I had dyslexia . I had a lot of trouble in school and was put intoemedial classes. I thought that I was stupid.

Q. THAT MUST HAVE HURT.

A. Sure. Yes. It was hard to overcome that. I kept thinking of ways to compensate. I learned to memorizehings very well because I just couldnt spell words. So later when I got to take classes like chemistry andnatomy where I had to memorize things, it turned out I was very good at that.

never planned a career. I had these blinders on that got me through a lot of things that might have been

bstacles. I just went forward. Its a skill that I had early on that must have been adaptive. I enjoyedbiology in high school and that brought me to a research lab at U.C. Santa Barbara. I loved doingxperiments and I had fun with them. I realized this kind of problem-solving fit my intellectual style. So inrder to continue having fun, I decided to go to graduate school at Berkeley. It was there that I went to Liz

Blackburns lab, where telomeres were being studied.

Q. WHAT ARE TELOMERES?

A. The concept of telomeres was really laid out by H. J. Muller and Barbara McClintock in the 1940s, when
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nversation With Carol W. Greider - On Winning a Nobel Prize in Science - Interview - NYTimes.com

/www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/13conv.html?sq=Greider interview&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print[10/13/2009 10:18:07 AM]

hey showed that there must be a special unit, a kind of cap at the end of the chromosome that holds itogether. In 1978, Elizabeth Blackburn, working with Joe Gall, identified the DNA sequence of telomeres.

Every time a cell divides, it gets shorter. But telomeres usually dont. So there must be somethingappening to the telomeres to keep their length in equilibrium. When I went into Liz Blackburns lab in984 and began working on this, the most exciting question that was being asked there was, If we know hat telomeres get short over time, how can they be relengthened? I set out to look for evidence that there

was such an enzyme as telomerase that would relengthen the telemeres once they shortened.

What I found out on Christmas Day 1984, through biochemical evidence, was that telomeres could beengthened by the enzyme we called telomerase, which keeps the telomeres from wearing down. After, Iound that out, I went home and put on Bruce Springsteen s Born in the USA, which was just out, and Ianced and danced and danced.

Q. WHY WAS THAT IMPORTANT?

A. Because broken or shortened telomeres are implicated in a whole group of diseases. Five or six yearsater, we and other groups discovered that telomere shortening played a role in the inability of cells toivide after a certain number of divisions as well as in cancer . So the possibility of a biochemical therapy or some of these diseases was now something that could be explored.

Q. ITS BEEN SAID THAT YOU AND DR. BLACKBURN DIDNT RECEIVE THE NOBEL PRIZE EARLIER BECAUSE IT HADNT YET BEEN PROVED THAT TELOMERES AND TELOMERASE WOULD BEVALUABLE IN UNDERSTANDING DISEASE. DOES THE PRIZE THIS YEAR MEAN THAT THERE NOW S AN ACCEPTANCE OF THEIR VALUE?

A. I certainly hope so. Thats why Nobel Prizes are usually awarded long after the original discovery. Itakes time for the medical implications to become clear. I think its clear now that the basic science we dids important to understanding cancers, some human genetic diseases and the age associated degenerativeiseases. The clinical relevance still needs to be understood in the medical community.

Q. MANY REPORTERS HAVE ASKED WHY TELOMERES RESEARCH SEEMS TO ATTRACT SO MANY FEMALE INVESTIGATORS. WHATS YOUR ANSWER?

A. Theres nothing about the topic that attracts women. Its probably more the founder effect. Womenesearchers were fostered early on by Joe Gall, and they got jobs around the country and they trained other

women. I think theres a slight bias of women to work for women because theres still a slight cultural biasor men to help men. The derogatory term is the old boys network. Its not that they are biased against

women or want to hurt them. They just dont think of them. And they often feel more comfortableromoting their male colleagues.

When Lawrence Summers , then the Harvard president, made that statement a few years ago about why here were fewer successful women in science, I thought, Oh, he couldnt really mean that. After reading
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telomeres - a conversation with carol w. greider - on winning a nobel prize in science

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