Nobel Prize — India’s Puzzle!
Why India is not able to get the Nobel prizes is a puzzle! How can India solve this puzzle?
Nobel Prizes have been awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace every year since 1901 to ‘those who, during the preceding years, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind.’ So far, 975 people have been awarded this prestigious prize, and 65 Asians have been awarded. Yet only 5 Indian citizens got it.
Today sitting in my office and looking through the big bow window watching the airplanes high in the sky, trying to land at John F. Kennedy, New York airport, I do not regret taking up research as a career. But indeed, I regret not having the ability to fight with my Ph.D. Supervisor Dr. PM Bhargava, the then director of just born ‘world-class’ research institute — Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, to publish my first research work paper.
In 1981 I was selected by the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) Bangalore as a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biochemistry. I had to prepare for their selection in 2 months by studying the Biochemistry text by Lehninger and Molecular Biology of Gene by James D. Watson. I saw these two books for the first time when Prof. Jagannath Ganguly, Chairman of the department of biochemistry, asked me to study them and come prepared for the interview. Even after 40 years, I still wonder what made him think that I could become a scientist instead of interviewing me for the technician position that I applied for in his department. Probably, I was the only fellow selected at that time who did not realize the value of that selection as a reflection of my awareness of that field. With the confidence of just reading two major textbooks and selection at IISc I appeared for the written test and interview at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, for a junior research fellowship. The written test was conducted for many candidates in the big auditorium of Regional Research Laboratories (RRL), now IICT -Indian Institute of Chemical Technology), Hyderabad. Here also, I was selected but on the condition that I give my consent to join in 24 hours. If not, it will be given to the next candidate. I joined CCMB, forgoing IISC selection. Dr. P.M. Bhargava, the Director, took me as his student. He is charming with brilliance in every aspect that I could think of, which may be the driver for my decision to join CCMB. He asked me to come up with three different problems that I wish to research for my Ph.D. I spent three months in the library reading the unsolved biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology problem. I started with the question that years ago, Dr. G. Satyanarayana Reddy asked to think — how a single microscopic cell grows to be a big human? I prepared three topics for research and presented them to a small team of scientists at CCMB in a room known as the Tea room on the 2nd floor of RRL, as the newly formed CCMB was housed on RRL’s second floor. My proposal on Ubiquitin was considered the most interesting one. I did not know the expression for cloud nine then, but I experienced it then. The reason is very simple, three months back, I did not know that field. Today I am able to present a problem that is worth doing a Ph.D. and interesting to all those who have been in that field for a long time and mostly foreign returns. But it took several years for me to realize how novice and stupid I was.
Ubiquitin is a small protein molecule that is present in all cells. It is needed to recycle the cellular proteins. Recycling for intracellular protein is very important for the cells to grow, divide and make the single-cell zygote a full-length organism. Dr. Aron Ciechanover, an Israeli scientist, and his team published the preliminary work on Ubiquitin a year before. The binding of Ubiquitin to the degraded protein appears to be the first step. But, many players of intracellular proteolysis were not known then. I set out to isolate the enzyme needed to degrade the proteins bound to Ubiquitin. By mid-1982, I got the crude fraction that contained the enzyme I searched for. I presented my work to the entire team. They wanted me to purify the enzyme. I spend the following year trying to purify the enzyme. By the time it is pure, there is no activity, or it cannot degrade proteins. The cooperation from all the scientists at CCMB could not help me get the enzyme as needed by Dr. P.M. Bhargava. Some senior scientists in the lab asked me to write a paper to show the other scientists in the field that we got the enzyme fraction though not purified yet. I wrote it. I give it to Dr. P.M. Bhargav to approve for sending out for publication. He did not want to do that. All my well-wishers at CCMB asked me to leave CCMB. But who in India would accept a student leaving P.M. Bhargava? So I applied for a French government scholarship while searching for other jobs in Employment News. One of the scientists I had been in constant communication with, Dr. Pedro Wahrmann, Paris, helped me get the scholarship. I left India. But I kept following the Ubiquitin field.
Dr. Aron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko have been publishing the details about the Ubiquitin. 1985 Dr. Araon Ciechnover published Transfer RNA is an essential component of the Ubiquitin- and ATP-dependent proteolytic system. I read this paper. I was stunned. The tRNA was the contaminant that I was asked to remove it to publish the paper! When I removed the enzyme was not active. Had we published the paper I wrote about the enzyme in 1983, we could have had a place in the ubiquitin research. By 1998 the Israeli team got a good understanding of the Ubiquitin System and published an important review. In the following years, they and others published a lot of research that established the role and importance of Ubiquitin in the growth of a single microscopic cell to become a big human normally and also in abnormal or disease states.
‘Thanks to the work of the three Laureates, it is now possible to understand at the molecular level how the cell controls a number of central processes by breaking down certain proteins and not others. Examples of processes governed by ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation are cell division, DNA repair, quality control of newly-produced proteins, and important parts of the immune defense. When the degradation does not work correctly, we fall ill. Cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis are two examples. Knowledge of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation offers an opportunity to develop drugs against these diseases and others,’ said the Nobel committee.
Students like me must be working on some very important projects at the nascent stage for their Ph.D. every year in Indian laboratories in all areas of sciences. If only we identify and nurture with the right support, I am sure Indians will have Nobel prizes awarded for their research. It is not the lack of talent, shortage of money, or discrimination by the Whites, but the lack of vision of the Indian leadership in science. The lack of India’s success in this area proves my point. I know that one research report or single individual cannot assure a country of getting a Nobel prize. At the same time, because I edited a book called “Scientists Greater than Einstein ‘I know well that the sustained work of normal, ordinary people in the right environment can achieve extraordinary results that fetch Nobel,
I am sure such stories may exist for many others engaged in cutting-edge research in India.
I hope India will have noble prizes in the future and, more than that, solves the simple questions we all have about nature and bring a better understanding of nature for the welfare of mankind.
But how?
If a systematic, scientific and objective review of all such situations is conducted, it can result in clues to correct India’s inability to identify and encourage its geniuses. Even if it does not result in immediate Nobel prizes, it would be a noble cause!
