̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Venki Ramakrishnan

New PhD funding programme launched

ps748 — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 12:17:11 +0000

Trinity College and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s new £48 million programme enabling fully-funded PhDs has been launched.

Opinion: GM crops already feed much of the world today – why not tomorrow’s generations too?

Anonymous — Tue, 24 May 2016 13:19:58 +0000

My parents researched malnutrition and under-nutrition in India, especially among children, and found that many diets recommended by Western nutritionists were in fact completely inapplicable to the poor. So they formulated cheap, healthy diets based on indigenous food with which people were familiar. Yet despite their many other efforts, a quarter of people in Indian and nearly one in nine people around the world do not have enough food to live a healthy active life.

̽��ֱ��World Bank estimates that we will need to produce about 50% more food by 2050 to feed a population of nine billion people. And the past 50 years have seen agricultural productivity soar – corn yields in the US have doubled, for example. But this has come with sharp increases in the use of fertilisers, pesticides and water which has brought its own problems. There is also no guarantee that this rate of increase in yields can be maintained.

Just as new agricultural techniques and equipment spurred on food production in the Middle Ages, and scientific crop breeding, fertilisers and pesticides did so for the Green Revolution of the 20th century, so we must rely on the latest technology to boost food production further. Genetic modification, or GM, used appropriately with proper regulation, may be part of the solution. Yet GM remains a highly contentious topic of debate where, unfortunately, the underlying facts are often obscured.

Views on GM differ across the world. Almost half of all crops grown in the US are GM, whereas widespread opposition in Europe means virtually no GM crops are grown there. In Canada, regulation is focused on the characteristics of the crop produced, while in the EU the focus is on how it has been modified. GM crops do not damage the environment by nature of their modification; GM is merely a technology, and it is the resulting product that we should be concerned about and regulate, just as we would any new product.

There are outstanding plant scientists who work on GM in the UK, but the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments have declared their opposition to GM plants. Why is there such strong opposition in a country with great trust in scientists?

About 15 years ago when GM was just emerging, its main proponents and many of the initial products were from large multinational corporations – even though it was publicly funded scientists who produced much of the initial research. Understandably, many felt GM was a means for these corporations to impose a monopoly on crops and maximise their profits. This perception was not helped by some of the practices of these big companies, such as introducing herbicide resistant crops that led to the heavy use of herbicides – often made by the same companies.

̽��ֱ��debate became polarised, and any sense that the evidence could be rationally assessed evaporated. There have been claims made about the negative health effects and economic costs of GM crops – claims later shown to be unsubstantiated. Today, half of those in the UK do not feel well informed about GM crops.

Everyday genetic modification

GM involves the introduction of very specific genes into plants. In many ways this is much more controlled than the random mutations that are selected for in traditional plant breeding. Most of the commonly grown crops that we consider natural actually bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors, having been selectively modified through cross-breeding over the thousands of years that humans have been farming crops – in a sense, this is a form of genetic modification itself.

In any case, we accept genetic modification in many other contexts: insulin used to treat diabetes is now made by GM microbes and has almost completely replaced animal insulin, for example. Many of the top selling drugs are proteins such as antibodies made entirely by GM, and now account for a third of all new medicines (and over half of the biggest selling ones). These are used to treat a host of diseases, from breast cancer to arthritis and leukaemia.

Millions of acres growing GM crops worldwide. Fafner/ISSSA, CC BY-SA

GM has been used to create insect-resistance in plants that greatly reduces or even eliminates the need for chemical insecticides, reducing the cost to the farmer and the environment. It also has the potential to make crops more nutritious, for example by adding healthier fats or more nutritious proteins. It’s been used to introduce nutrients such as beta carotene from which the body can make vitamin A – the so-called golden rice – which prevents night blindness in children. And GM can potentially create crops that are drought resistant – something that as water becomes scarce will become increasingly important.

More than 10% of the world’s arable land is now used to grow GM plants. An extensive study conducted by the US National Academies of Sciences recently reported that there has been no evidence of ill effects linked to the consumption of any approved GM crop since the widespread commercialisation of GM products 18 years ago. It also reported that there was no conclusive evidence of environmental problems resulting from GM crops.

GM is a tool, and how we use it is up to us. It certainly does not have to be the monopoly of a few multinational corporations. We can and should have adequate regulations to ensure the safety of any new crop strain (GM or otherwise) to both ourselves and the environment, and it is up to us to decide what traits in any new plant are acceptable. People may be opposed to GM crops for a variety of reasons and ultimately consumers will decide what they want to eat. But the one in nine people in poor countries facing malnutrition or starvation do not enjoy that choice. ̽��ֱ��availability of cheap, healthy and nutritious food for them is a matter of life and death.

Alongside other improvements in farming practices, genetic modification is an important part of a sustainable solution to global food shortages. However, the motto of the Royal Society is nullius in verba; roughly, “take nobody’s word for it”. We need a well-informed debate based on an assessment of the evidence. ̽��ֱ��Royal Society has published GM Plants: questions and answers which can play its part in this. People should look at the evidence – not just loudly voiced opinions – for themselves and make up their own minds.

Venki Ramakrishnan, Professor and Deputy Director, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Professor Sir Venki Ramakrishnan (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology) discusses how genetically modified crops could help solve the problem of food security.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Sir Venki Ramakrishnan confirmed as President Elect of the Royal Society

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 11:32:50 +0000

Sir Venki, who is currently Deputy Director of the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology and a Fellow of Trinity College, will take up the post of President on 1 December 2015.

Sir Venki has a BSc in physics from Baroda ̽��ֱ��, India and a PhD from Ohio ̽��ֱ�� in the USA.

He studied biology at the ̽��ֱ�� of California, San Diego and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Yale ̽��ֱ��.

Subsequently, he was a biophysicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and professor of biochemistry at the ̽��ֱ�� of Utah before he moved to the UK in 1999.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003, and is also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina (the German Science Academy), and a Foreign Member of the Indian National Science Academy.

At the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, Sir Venki studies how genetic information is translated by the ribosome to make proteins, and the action of antibiotics on this process.

He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 with Tom Steitz and Ada Yonath and was awarded a knighthood in 2012.

There have been 60 Presidents of the Royal Society since it was founded in 1660, including Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, and Ernest Rutherford.

Adapted from a Royal Society press release.

Nobel laureate Sir Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan has been confirmed as President Elect of the Royal Society.

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, President Elect of ̽��ֱ��Royal Society

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Dr Frederick Sanger (1918-2013)

sj387 — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:37:18 +0000

A pioneer of DNA sequencing, Dr Sanger started his scientific career by reading Natural Sciences as an undergraduate at St John’s College, Cambridge. He subsequently undertook a PhD, completed in 1943 with a thesis entitled " ̽��ֱ��metabolism of the amino acid lysine in the animal body". After receiving his doctorate, he continued to work at the ̽��ֱ��, aiming to determine the entire sequence of amino acids in a protein chain.

Dr Sanger is one of only four double Nobel laureates, and the only person ever to have won both prizes in chemistry. In 1958, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on protein structure and, in particular, the discovery of the structure of insulin. In 1962 he left the ̽��ֱ�� and moved to the new UK Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) as Head of the Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division.

Whilst at the LMB, Sanger worked with colleagues in developing methods to sequence the nucleic acids DNA and RNA. His group produced the first complete sequence of a virus genome, of just over 5000 base-pairs; they went on to sequence the first human genome of about 16,000 base-pairs, and in 1982 they sequenced the genome of a virus of around 48,000 base-pairs. This work foreshadowed modern research into the human genome, including that done by the Sanger Institute.

It was this work on DNA that earned Sanger his second Nobel Prize in 1980, received jointly with Paul Berg (Stanford ̽��ֱ��) and Walter Gilbert (Harvard ̽��ֱ��), “for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids”. His development of the “dideoxy” or “Sanger” technique of sequencing is still used today, and allows 500-800 bases to be read at a time. Three years later, in 1983, Sanger retired.

Venki Ramakrishnan, Deputy Director of the LMB, said: “Fred was one of the outstanding scientists of the last century and it is simply impossible to overestimate the impact he has had on modern genetics and molecular biology. Moreover, by his modest manner and his quiet and determined way of carrying out experiments himself right to the end of his career, he was a superb role model and inspiration for young scientists everywhere.”

Richard Henderson, former LMB Director, remembers, “He was a superb hands-on scientist with outstanding judgement and skill, and an extremely modest yet encouraging way of interacting with his younger colleagues. I particularly remember one young scientist who had asked Fred for advice being told, ‘I think you should try harder’. ̽��ֱ��example he set will continue to motivate young scientists even now he has gone.”

Sir Gregory Winter, Master of Trinity College, is a former Head of Division of Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry at LMB - a position that Sanger also held. He said: " ̽��ֱ��impact of Fred Sanger's work in reading the polymers of life has been felt in almost every area of biology and medicine; it is difficult to imagine a world without his contributions. Not only did his work provide deep insights into the chemical nature of life, but it had huge practical implications - it led directly to the sequencing of the human genome and also helped to lay the foundations of the modern biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries."

Dr Frederick Sanger, recognised by many as the “father of genomics”, died in 2013 at the age of 95. ̽��ֱ��founding member of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and the person after whom the Sanger Institute is named, he was known as an extremely modest and self-effacing man whose innumerable scientific contributions had an extraordinary impact on molecular biology.

Fred was one of the outstanding scientists of the last century and it is simply impossible to overestimate the impact he has had on modern genetics and molecular biology

Venki Ramakrishnan

Nick

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