I had a great opportunity last week to attend a GIAN (Global Initiative of Academic Networks) workshop on 'Post-transcriptional Control of Gene Expression in Eukaryotes' coordinated by Prof. Arthur Garfield Hunt from University of Kentucky, USA. He can be appropriately called 'RNA guy' in Plant biology as his work on RNA, poly-A tailing of mRNA alongwith RNA viruses has led to increased understanding of the natural world. He presented a series of talks for 6 days at our university. His topics ranged from kinetics of mRNA turnover to gene sequencing. Upon my request he generously devoted time for a quick interview. Below is the unabridged text of the conversation.
CuriousGuts: First of all Dr. Hunt, your talks were beautifully presented. I was just wondering if we could just learn to keep our slide minimalistic, without any clutter yet so rich in substance, that would be wonderful. I would like to go back, I was just curious to know when were your first exposed to science? How your interest developed in science?
Dr Hunt: I would say in probably first grade or second grade and it just developed spontaneously. My parents kept a lot of books around and the science books interested me. My teachers in early education kind of encouraged me and it seemed like a good fit. CuriousGuts: First of all Dr. Hunt, your talks were beautifully presented. I was just wondering if we could just learn to keep our slide minimalistic, without any clutter yet so rich in substance, that would be wonderful. I would like to go back, I was just curious to know when were your first exposed to science? How your interest developed in science?
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| Prof. Hunt still smiling with the culprit who reduced the entropy of his tea! |
Dr. Hunt: My favourite books are history books. My hobby is I think curiously enough to read about world war 2. I try to expand my knowledge from what I learnt in school. Americans don't learn about Russia, I think it is important to understand Russia and other places that Americans might see adversarial.
CuriousGuts: I myself got interested in world war 2 and sometimes it comes inspirational to me when I struggle with an experiment then I imagine as if what was it like sitting on that boat during Normandy landing and then I de-stress by putting my experimental problems in perspective. Does that happen to you?
Dr. Hunt: My interest in history is to try and keep a bigger perspective. So, science is international. To try to limit unconscious biases that one might have for other scientists or people from other countries or so. I find my interest in history and things I learn help me along those lines.
CuriousGuts: How does it feel to you, as you have come from an era when these space exploration began, the time when genetic code was decoded, now we have a plethora of information like genetic sequencing. How does it feel to be a part of three scientific generations . now so much is there. how does it feel to you?
Dr. Hunt: When I started in science it was a Ph.D thesis to sequence maybe 300 base pair very small gene and now I can have an undergraduate student sequence an entire genome in a week. so when I think about this is mind boggling . It is very humbling and when I think about it little bit more I get very optimistic about the future. So, i look at where we were in 1976 when I started graduate school and where we are now I imagine by the next forty years the progress and whats awaiting us, i mean i can’t imagine where we would be.
CuriousGuts: Was that in your thoughts that we would jump so much like moore’s law what they call?
Dr. Hunt: Not at all. I have been swept along by advances in technology. I have to admit that probably I was skeptical about the intentions of human genome project , plant genome projects in 1990’s . I was skeptical that it was worth the effort because in 1999 the effort was tremendous and expense was tremendous.
CuriousGuts: As we go along we see plethora of information in our databases but crisis emerging among them is of reproducibility. we see retractions, we see that biological data which one lab generates sometimes looses significance in other labs . As we are delving into big data sciences and mega scientific projects reproducibility continues to be a major challenge. and as more complex and advanced things get incorporated the threat magnifies. what do you make of this scenario?
Dr. Hunt: My basic attitude toward scientific literature is absent - like clear or out right fraud or something. second, there is a hint of truth and accuracy in every experiment. sometimes you have to take the time to find what is consistent but everyone who sets up an experiment reports the result accurately. if there is irreproducibility it reflects factors, variables beyond one’s anticipation.
CuriousGuts: The experimenter might be homes enough but multifaceted nature of variables. but a study done by a private company found out that major scientific claims made by several paper on cancer were found to be untrue. the key experimental results could not be repeated. what do you make of this?
Dr. Hunt: I am aware of that story. honestly, I would like to see all the results that the company generated to be sure that their claims were accurate. Again, my attitude is that there is grain of truth in every honestly performed study and you just have to be willing to accept that something maybe different in different groups but done properly there is truth in an experiment.
CuriousGuts: There are some challenges which I want to be solved during my life time like dark matter, stem cell use in wider therapies, vaccine against tuberculosis, better batteries so that we don’t have to charge phone enough. I want to see these and many others to be resolved during my lifetime. when it comes to plant biology, what would you like plant biology to achieve immediate future and distant future?
Dr. Hunt: I have to think about that a little bit. So, I guess from a practical perspective I guess just a better understanding and ways to better respond to crisis that might arise due to global warming. because this will affect crop production in the world perhaps moving along and better tailoring crops for nutritional purposes. Enhancing the utility and yields of crops in a changing world.
CuriousGuts: At an academic note I want to know about your coping strategy for the phrase ‘the more we know, more we realise how less we know’
Dr. Hunt: Certainly I am aware that the more I know the less I know. So my attitude to this is that iI view myself as a kid in candy store so I got a gum ball out of one machine and now I have big rack of candy back there and once thats gone I have to move to other.
CuriousGuts: You have had a beautiful journey in science. If you had to sit in a time machine and go back, what suggestion would you like to give to your younger self?
Dr. Hunt: This is a difficult question because to be perfectly honest I am very happy with the trace of my life from becoming interested in science to what i did. i knew i was going to be biochemist when i was 16 years old. I am very happy the way things have turned out. I cant think of much advice for choosing a different path or trying to do things differently. I was very fortunate to have excellent mentors. My advice would be that if you feel that you are stuck and you are not going to reach a conclusion in the day to day or in 10 to 20 years just keep persisting because if you got a plan and it makes sense, talk it over to your mentor and keep to it. There would always be roadblocks but you have to keep faith.
CuriousGuts: There is a trend now-a-days in which applied project are given disproportionate more priority over basic projects. when the pressure of final molecule or vaccine or resistant crop is higher than understanding the basic science how do you assess this situation?
Dr. Hunt: I agree that basic science is under-appreciated and under-funded. The point I usually make is that any applied project or application or translationary research is grounded in thousands upon thousands of studies performed in basic research laboratory. It can be viewed like a plant system, there are fungi which exists underground like a huge network of rhizomes or fungal mass and up through this comes a vegetative shoot or mushroom. So, the vegetation shoot, translational research, application doesn't exist without the huge mass underground. So, I don't know how to convey this message but I think it is an accurate depiction of the relationship between basic and applied research.
CuriousGuts: How do you keep yourself so up-to-date? I mean I hear all the cries from my graduate mates that its tough to keep up with literature. what is your routine with regard to this because you seem to be very updated in your field?
Dr. Hunt: It’s a good question. there is way too much to keep up with. So, I get couple of journals in my lab, in my office I have newsreader or feed which rolls the titles and abstracts from probably 20 journals, which I keep up with from time to time. every one and then if I encounter a subject which I feel I need to know more about i simply turn to Mr.Google. So, between google and pubmed you can catch up pretty much everything. The google is good because you get leads to more popular or lay press which leads you to perspective which you don't get just if you are buried in a journal.
CuriousGuts: If we see at popularisation of science, there are very few documentaries and books on plants. We can find a lot of documentaries on the universe or wild animals but we have only handful on plants. Private life of plants narrated by David Attenborough was made long ago and has not been continued till then. popularisation of plant sciences seems to be on nobody’s agenda. why don't you write a book on these lines?
Dr. Hunt: This is discussion that American Society of Plant Biologists have regularly. the society does not ask its member to write a book but they want to engage in social media, and have much more involved in outreach and education at primary or kindergarten level.
CuriousGuts: Thank You Sir for your time.
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