Campus Connection

Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse.

Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse delivered a talk titled "Controlling the Cell Cycle" on the afternoon of October 29 at the MSTF auditorium.  The talk was hosted by the Department of Pharmacology as part of the Krantz lecture series at the medical school, wherein prominent scientists are invited each year to share their scientific expertise with the UMB scientific and medical community. Nurse pioneered work in the field of cell cycle signaling which led him to propose the model for cell cycle control in eukaryotic cells and eventually earned him a Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2001. Nurse is currently President of the Rockefeller University, New York where he also runs a laboratory.

The scientific community was still in the dark about the dynamics of mitotic regulation at the time Nurse started his project. During the hour long lecture delivered to a rapt audience in the MSTF auditorium filled to capacity, he spoke about his discovery of the cdc2 gene controlling cell mitosis in yeast. The human homolog Cyclin Dependent Kinase 1 (Cdk1) was subsequently identified as the checkpoint for transition between various phases of the cell cycle. Over the years, his results have fueled a plethora of subsequent research that has shed light on a number of cellular phenomena governing cell division and cancer progression. He contrasted various experimental details from a few decades ago against those commonly available today and marveled at the ease of garnering excellent quality data in today’s laboratory environment.

Nurse's delivery was interspersed with witty repertoire, especially as he recounted his days as a graduate student and a post-doctoral fellow and the hiccups he felt along the righteous scientific path.  If graduate students today consider themselves impoverished, he assured the same phenomenon was prevalent a few decades ago, as was laboratory procrastination - the only difference being the medium of procrastination. Nurse explained how he was different from other students and post-docs in his time - he would spend the hours available during experimental procedures reading as many scientific papers as he could, the dull tone of scientific literature notwithstanding.

Nurse underlined the importance of reporting facts as observed by the investigator instead of being influenced by what was hypothesized and expected by the researcher at the outset of experiments. He explained how his initial findings had perplexed him by deviating too far from his predicted results; nevertheless, the ‘good angel’ silenced the ‘evil angel’ and guided Nurse into reporting and explaining the observed data as opposed to not making his findings public. Nurse held his audience captivated until his talk ended at the end of the hour.

The seminar was followed by a reception at the MSTF atrium where refreshments were served for the attendees. There Nurse interacted with faculty, investigators, scientists-in-training and graduate students. The UMB scientific community got a chance for a direct tete-a-tete with Nurse, not confined to his research alone but also more general concerns and queries about careers in research.

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