By Kevin Waldron.
Last week saw ICaMB host the latest in our series of Baddiley lectures, which commemorates Professor Sir James Baddiley (1918-2008). Baddiley was a distinguished Professor at Newcastle University (1954-81) and a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected 1961) who made numerous important fundamental discoveries in microbiology, not least the discovery of teichoic acids, cell wall components in Gram positive bacteria.
Jeff Errington introduces Venki Ramakrishnan to the ICaMB audience
Baddiley’s work on the fundamental processes of bacteria, including the structure and function of components of the bacterial cell wall, is continued to this day in Newcastle through the work of members of ICaMB’s Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB). Although James Baddiley died shortly after the first in ICaMB’s series of Baddiley lectures, we were delighted that the Baddiley family was again represented at this year’s lecture by James’s son, Christopher Baddiley.
This year’s guest speaker was Professor Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, distinguished research leader and Deputy Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Nobel laureate and newly-elected President of the Royal Society. With all of the demands on his time that come with this new role as President, the large audience that gathered on Friday afternoon were grateful that Venki was able to find time to visit Newcastle to deliver his lecture. As ever, both the lecture and the surrounding celebration was expertly organised and introduced by CBCB Director, Professor Jeff Errington.
Venki illustrates the structure of the yeast mitochondrial ribosome
Venki’s lecture gave a brief history of his atomic-resolution structural studies of the ribosome, the macromolecular nucleoprotein complex that converts the four-letter genetic code in nucleic acid into the twenty-letter amino acid code in proteins. He presented detailed structural models of eukaryotic ribosomes, derived from X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy data accumulated over 30 years of detailed study in his laboratory.
We asked some of ICaMB’s early career researchers to describe their impression of Venki’s lecture:
“Professor Venki Ramakrishnan was kind enough to deliver this year’s Baddiley lecture. It was an honour to meet Venki, who somehow managed to fit us in between Royal Society committee meetings and a chat with the Science minister! He impressed us all with a phenomenal talk discussing how he solved the structure of the mitochondrial ribosome using cryo electron microscopy. Wow – cryo EM has truly moved beyond blob-ology! One thing that really struck me about Venki is how humble he is; despite being so incredibly successful and lauded, there’s not a trace of ego on the guy; something for us all to aspire to.”
Venki illustrates how the ribosome works
Seamus Holden, University Research Fellow
“It was incredibly cool to hear about Venki’s work first hand. The enormity of his achievement became clear when he showed a single slide with the dozens of conformations of the ribosome’s catalytic cycle and indicated that there were structures available for the majority of them! And what was humbling was that Venki did not seem at all interested in dwelling upon his past successes. Rather, he briskly moved past this slide onto his current work regarding mitochondrial ribosomes which was both cutting-edge but also somewhat raw because of its novelty. I found it inspiring to see a scientist of his stature still so driven to continue discovering and learning.”
Post lecture, Venki holds the gift he received from his hosts at ICaMB
Heath Murray, Royal Society URF
“For me Venki’s journey was an excellent advert for never giving up. Often as researchers (particularly at the start of our careers) we are encouraged to know when to call time on a set of experiments that are bogged down and not yielding answers. Pursuit of the next grant and the speed of some of our competitors unfortunately make it risky to continue to spend years and years believing in the same project that fails to show progress relatively quickly. Yet what an example Venki is, many years and many postdocs focusing on the same problem, persistence and belief in himself and his team has more than paid off. Inspirational.”
Suzanne Madgwick, Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry Fellow
I turned 60 on the 3rd of May. The year leading up to that was traumatic for me because, psychologically, it felt like a turning point in life – a long and enjoyable career behind me but a rapidly foreshortening window ahead! Surprisingly, things suddenly looked up when the birthday actually arrived (last Tuesday) – I didn’t really feel any different!
We wondered how many of the past members of the lab would be able to make it, given that they were scattered to the four corners of the earth and we had no funds to cover their expenses. To my astonishment and delight, over 20 lab alumni agreed to come, and we were able to fill all of the 16 speaker slots with alumni from outside Newcastle.
A day of great science – and warm friendship
The only thing that I can think of is that if you can once assemble a critical mass of good scientists, which includes a few very good people, the culture or ecology of the lab becomes self sustaining. New people coming into the lab are well trained and inspired by the existing members, and they in turn go on to succeed in their own right. My job mainly becomes one of trying to make sure that the environment and infrastructure of the lab is capable of enabling good scientists to achieve their potential.
