Scarlet proteins

Tell me how old you are and multiply that by 18. That is the number of times you have completely changed to a new self — molecularly speaking. I think this is a good intimate reminder to be reassured in case you have been doubting whether nature has been generous to you. This is because the 25,000-strong army of proteins in your body gets destroyed at a rate of about five to 10 percent a day. In less than a month, you become completely, molecularly new.

I was about to start my own 756th cycle when I got the chance this week to listen to a talk by Nobel Laureate Dr. Aaron Ciechanover who, together with two other scientists, Dr. Avram Hershko, his mentor, and Dr. Irwin Rose, discovered this very story of destruction in the lives of the proteins that make up all living organisms except bacteria. While DNA is the basic unit of life, it is genes that string them in the sequences that code for proteins. Proteins in turn are what Dr. Ciechanover called the “machines” inside our bodies that do the all the work to keep us alive.

Dr. Ciechanover said that in those days, everyone else was working on problems that had to do with how proteins get made but he was intrigued to work on the other end of the problem: how do they die?

In stunning clarity which can only come from mastery, Ciechanover explained why proteins have to die and how they die. He said that proteins have to die because they end up “misfolded” which will not make them perform the function they should or even do damage. Protein death or “degradation” was not even known to occur before their discovery. We were thought to die of the same proteins we are born with. But thanks to Dr. Ciechanover, Dr. Hershko and Dr. Rose, we now know that we can have molecular birthdays 18 times a year.

And how do proteins die? It has largely to do with ubiquitin, a protein which serves as a sort of scarlet letter, seared by the cell on to other proteins to mark them for doom. This scarlet mark changes the molecular weight of the protein and is read as an address headed for the cellular equivalent of landfill where the labeled proteins are destroyed. 

Because of this basic research that they have done, nothing seemed to come close to the prize of seeing certain cancers disappear. Not even the Nobel Prize seemed to come close to the satisfaction Dr. Ciechanover felt from this. He eclipsed the grandeur that surrounded the story of the Nobel awarding ceremony in Sweden by emphasizing instead that in that affair, a man had approached him to personally thank him because his own cancer has disappeared. He told the man that it was the drugs that helped him get cured. But the cured (or in medical terms — “long term remission”) man knew the relationship between science and technology because he told Dr. Ciechanover that without the research that Dr. Ciechanover and his colleagues did, the drug companies would have not been able to have the understanding that was the basis of the drugs they have developed that have proven effective in curing some cancers.

This is such a sparkling lesson for those who confuse science with technology. You can always have science without technology but you can never have technology without science. The “usefulness” of a discovery should not be part of the criteria in supporting scientific research because we do not really know where it will lead. Dr. Ciechanover’s story is a good reminder that technology is not only about gadgets but also the drugs that help us manage what happens to our bodies. Technology is what we do with what we know. Science is what we know and how we know it. Take away science and you cannot have any kind of technology.

Dr. Ciechanover started his talk by saying that the aim of any scientist is to do excellent work and not to win the Nobel or any award. I heard the same message from another Nobel Laureate, Dr. David Gross, in January this year and he came close to scolding a young woman when she asked him: “When you were young, did you already think of winning the Nobel?” To which Dr. Gross, quite emphatically said, “You do not go into science to win an award.” He paused, walked a bit onstage and shook his head a bit and continued: “That is just wrong.” Then, he said, “You go into science because it is the adventure of your life.”

If Filipino parents were anything like Jewish mothers, Dr. Ciechanover said that they probably get disappointed when their children go to medical school but do not become practicing physicians. Dr. Ciechanover chose to finish his Ph.D. and do medical research instead of being a practicing physician. He said that his mother calls doctors who are not practicing physicians “fake doctors” while the practicing ones, she calls “real” doctors. Everyone in the audience laughed and I surely hope it included some guilty parents. For a “fake” doctor, Dr. Ciechanover is sure having the great adventure of his life.

Here in our country, we have good minds trying to live the great adventure of their lives in science but find that the country does not understand them or support them and even find what they do to be too remote compared to the national emergencies of politics, economics and showbiz. I think that here in our country teeming with lawyers, there is so much attention given to the Bar exams compared to other important exams, especially in the sciences and engineering. Has this surplus of attention that we give to the legal profession really elevated our capacity to reason as a nation? Is it brazen to suggest that we turn our support and attention to other fields of endeavors — to the sciences, engineering and in the arts — which have proven to be the traditions in the history of civilizations that have more reliably led to progress and helped inspire creative and innovative societies?

Dr. Ciechanover was here as part of Bridges Dialogues Toward a Culture of Peace sponsored by the International Peace Foundation. They believe that peace is too important to be left to politicians and that good minds from all other sectors should reach out so we can have it. They believe that the knowing and the understanding which drive science could help lead us to better respect each other and this planet and maybe have peace, maybe even peace without borders.

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