“A spine-chilling habit of picking up dangerous animals”
The Australian newspaper has a really cool interview with UCSF scientist Elizabeth Blackburn, who recently shared a prestigious Lasker prize with two other researchers. She also just won an award from the Gruber foundation for her research but also for fighting “the politicization of science.”
Born in 1948 in Hobart, she soon discovered a childhood passion for creatures. She also developed - as she confessed in her Lasker acceptance speech - a “spine-chilling habit of picking up dangerous animals” including jellyfish and stinging ants. All this translated into an interest in biochemistry and how living things work.
Blackburn, an Australian who’s lived in the U.S. for three decades, is best known as the co-discoverer of telomerase, “the enzyme that makes and repairs telomeres, the DNA caps that protect the ends of each chromosome and the integrity of the genes contained within them.” Her research has shown that telomerase constantly replenishes the telomeric tips of chromsomes in some organisms, but not humans. If we could reactivate our telomerase, we might be able to stop cell aging. But also, turning off telomerase could help stop cancers, which have high telomerase levels.
The other reason she’s well known is the fact that George Bush booted her from his Council on Bioethics, after she criticized his policy on stem cell research. In the interview, she also talks about the problems women scientists have balancing career and family, and how she solved them herself.