VENKI      RAMAKRISHNAN

The Gene Machine--The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome  by Venki Ramakrishnan ; Published by Harper Collins  ; Pages 288 ; Price Rs 699 /-

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                                         The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving the structure of the ribosome was shared by three scientists---Professor Venki Ramakrishnan, with Professor Thomas Steitz and Professor Ada Yonath  . Venki ,the author of the book under review,  is a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and is the current president of the Royal Society, London.

The book  'Gene Machine' is as good as a Sherlock Holmes story written with great verve and  wit. What is provided is  an entertaining,  informative and insightful, personal account of developments in the ribosome field.

Hear what Venki says, “It was early October 2009. 'The prize for chemistry was to be announced on Wednesday. The chemistry prize often alternates between the hard-core chemists and the more biological chemists… Since they had given it to a "biological" area the year before, I figured the ribosome would not be a candidate and I would be reprieved for another year. So by Wednesday morning, I had completely forgotten about it. Halfway to work, I got a flat tyre on my bicycle and had to walk the rest of the way.'

Born in India, Ramakrishnan obtained a bachelor’s degree in physics at age 19, followed by a physics Ph.D at age 24.  He did not think highly of theoretical physics  and began exploring molecular biology, using tools such as neutron scattering and X-ray crystallography to explore the structure of biomolecules. The success of his research came in part because of the tools he used so well, as well as interactions with Steitz  and Yonath .

 This  volume is   about his contributions to the discovery of the structure of the ribosome --an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms--that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases. But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. Finally  the book  is an honest account of an insider of the pursuit of high-stakes science.

Venki talks of  his education and discovering  his place during his early rambles in the world of  science. He is a young  research scientist confronted by  obstacles and dilemmas that several  scientists encountered before him and others will face  in the years to come. We are also allowed to peep into his  personal life and how he benefited from the sustained  support of his wife, Vera Rosenberry.

 The book divulges  the human face of scientific research with closely connected  emotions which resulted in both excitement and disappointment. However Venki declares that  that the book is a purely  personal account – constrained by his vision and memory.

We lead on to matters slightly technical. Venki starts his story with  India, where he studied physics before immigrating to the United States to earn his doctorate in physics. During this time, he met and married -- a major life event served to refocus his attention on how to successfully provide for his family as a working scientist. Confronted with a lifetime of “boring and incremental calculations that wouldn’t result in any real advance in understanding”, Dr. Ramakrishnan took a big risk and abruptly shifted his career focus to molecular biology after reading an article about the ribosome in Scientific American. To do this, he spent two years as a grad student in molecular biology at UCSD, gaining essential knowledge and skills necessary to pursue his new career.

Because electron microscopy was in its infancy during most of this work, this meant that an older technique, x-ray crystallography, was the main tool used to decipher the structure of the ribosome. But         x-ray crystallography created fuzzier, less detailed images than electron microscopy, so this led to the field being informally known as “blobology”.

Despite disappointments and setbacks in his second career, Venki persisted for more than 30 years before being awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, being named president of the Royal Society of London, the world’s oldest scientific society and then being knighted in the 2012. He is not happy being called  ‘Sir’.

We are apprised of  the inside story of lab life including the struggles, failures and blind alleys, the collaborators and friends, the professional competitors and rivals, and the timely and critically important help provided by a number of scientists, as Venki and his team worked tirelessly to solve the structure of this microscopic biological machine. We learn how a scientist develops the ideas, skills, tools -- and the people, along with all the quirks and talents that each one embodies -- that are essential to achieve such a remarkable scientific discovery.

This profoundly human story is written with honesty and humility. His story about the phone call in October was amusing, and he even shares his wife’s incredulous response when she first learned he had won the Nobel Prize: “I thought you had to be really smart to win one of those!” 

One of the key themes in this book is that  contemporary science is a synthesis of ideas and progress by teams of highly dedicated individuals who devote their lives to solving questions they find compelling.

The author devotes the Epilogue to present some thoughts on the influence (both good and bad) of Truly Big Prizes, particularly the Nobel and the Breakthrough Prizes, upon scientific careers and scientific progress

This lucid and highly readable account will be enjoyed by students in any of the sciences, by those interested in the history of science, or who love reading memoirs. 

The colourful characters that were involved in the race to crystallise the ribosome provide a richness to the narrative. Venki was the “dark horse”—someone who “came out of nowhere and surprised everyone” .Among Ramakrishnan’s main competitors was Thomas Steitz, a talented Yale crystallographer, who was renowned for his directness and—as Ramakrishnan observes—a slightly Amish appearance due to his chin-strap beard. Others included the Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath, who led a large team split between the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the Max Planck Institutes in Berlin and Hamburg, and the “Sage of Santa Cruz,” biochemist Harry Noller, an RNA expert with “the demeanor of a mellow, pot-smoking California hippie.”

A wonderful account of fighting academicians, eccentric competitors the author encountered as well as a cynical view of the scientific establishment.

Gene Machine gives an enlightening and enjoyable picture of the human side of scientific research and stresses the importance of interdisciplinary efforts to deal with the “big picture” issues in modern science.

 
Throughout the book, Professor Ramakrishnan keeps revisiting the theme of the 'politics of recognition'. In a chapter devoted to this he gives a very informative account of the history of the Nobel prize, how it has evolved, how it is perceived by the public, and how it compares to different awards in science and other fields.

Professor Ramakrishnan also cites interesting facts about early Nobel prize laureates and acknowledges great scientists who had been omitted, for instance, Dmitri Mendeleev who formulated the periodic table. This alludes to another Nobel laureate Dr Francis Crick's view, cited by the author, that there is 'a certain amount of lottery' about the prize.

Towards the end, Professor Ramakrishnan references the Bible, in the context of the various awards and honours that he has received, as he argues, due to having been awarded the Nobel prize in the first place. He quotes Matthew 13:12: 'For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.' 

'Gene Machine' is one book you cannot  put  book down.

Tit-Bits

1.Venki married Vera Rosenberry, a separated woman with a tiny daughter, Tanya. The couple have a son of their own,named  Raman. Vera is a children's book illustrator.

2.In 1964,Dorothy Hodgkin, a Fellow of the Royal Society, went on to win the Nobel Prize for her work, an event reported with the headline  "Nobel Prize for a wife from Oxford", beginning the article with :"A housewife and mother of three yesterday won the Nobel Prize for chemistry".Clearly for some journalists,her domestic status and ability to procreate were still the most important facts about her.

P.P.Ramachandran.

2/6/2019.