Millions will die unless they are introduced, says Richard John Roberts

The developing world, including India, should adopt genetically modified (GM) crops, Nobel laureate Richard John Roberts said here on Tuesday. Rallying behind GM crops, Mr. Roberts said he is not alone in GM advocacy as he has garnered the support of 75 other Nobel laureates for it.

Dig at Greenpeace

“Environmental organisations such as Greenpeace oppose GMO for political ends. There is no truth in their claim as there is no scientific proof that GM crops are harmful,” Mr. Roberts emphasised in a media interaction that followed his lecture organised by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Telangana Academy of Science.

Standing by his pro-GM stand, he said millions of people in the third world would die of starvation unless GM crops were introduced.

“We have been breeding crops for long naturally. I would call GM precision plant breeding. Greenpeace is in the business of scaring people when it comes to GM crops,” he said.

The Nobel laureate was in the city to deliver the CCMB’s distinguished lecture series. Mr. Roberts who won the prestigious prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 asked: “If technology can support starvation crisis, why not use it?”

Mr. Roberts, however, said private investment in medical research should not be supported.

“In the West, the drug manufacturers are not interested in cure as they want to keep people dependent on drugs. Countries in the developing world should not follow this model of capitalism,” Mr. Roberts said.

‘Chase your passion’

In the distinguished lecture, Mr. Roberts asked scientists to follow their passion.

“I wanted to be a detective when I was a child, but later developed an interest in science as my parents gifted me a chemistry kit,” said Mr. Roberts, who developed his taste in research at a very young age.

“My first experiments were to make fire crackers,” he said. Someone who still likes jazz music and caving, Mr. Roberts had shared the Nobel Prize with Phil Sharp. A British citizen, he was knighted in 2008.

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The Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrichand Aziz Sancar for their research into the mechanisms that cells use to repair DNA.

The three scientists, from Sweden, the US and Turkey respectively, received an equal share of the prestigious 8m Swedish kronor (£631,000) award for “mechanistic studies of DNA repair”. Their research mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA in order to prevent errors occurring in genetic information.

Announcing the prize in Stockholm, Göran K Hansson, the secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said: “This year’s prize is about the cell’s tool box for repairing DNA.”

In a call to the Academy, Lindahl said of winning: “It was a surprise. I knew that over the years I have been occasionally considered but so have hundreds of other people. I feel very lucky and proud to be selected.”

From the moment an egg is fertilised it begins to divide. Two cells become four, four cells become eight. After one week a human embryo consists of 128 cells, each with its own set of genetic material. Unravel all that DNA and it would stretch for 300 metres.

But many billions more divisions take place on the path to adulthood, until we carry enough DNA in our trillions of cells to reach 250 times to the sun and back. The most remarkable feat is how the genetic information is copied so faithfully. “From a chemical perspective, this ought to be impossible,” the Nobel committee said.

“All chemical processes are prone to random errors. Additionally, your DNA is subjected on a daily basis to damaging radiation and reactive molecules. In fact, you ought to have been a chemical chaos long before you even developed into a foetus,” they added

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 Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for discovering that tiny particles called neutrinos change identities as they whiz through the universe, proving that they have mass.

By uncovering the “chameleon-like” nature of neutrinos, the laureates had solved a long-standing puzzle in particle physics that could alter our grasp of the cosmos, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe,” the academy said.

Kajita, 56, is director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and professor at the University of Tokyo. McDonald, 72, is a professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.

“Neutrinos are among the fundamental particles (which) we do not know how to subdivide any further,” McDonald told reporters in Stockholm by phone. “Therefore, their position within the models of physics at the most fundamental level is very important,” he said.

“When you do not know whether they have mass, it’s otherwise difficult to understand how to incorporate them into those theories that give us a more complete understanding of the world of physics at the most fundamental level. Discovering this property helps us tremendously in this regard.”

Kajita seemed flummoxed at a news conference organized by his university. “My mind has gone completely blank. I don’t know what to say,” he said after taking the stage.

After getting his composure back, he stressed that many people had contributed to his work, and that there was much work still to do.

“The universe where we live in is still full of unknowns. A major discovery cannot be achieved in a day or two. It takes a lot of people and a long time. I would like to see young people try to join our pursuit of mystery solving,” he said.

For decades the neutrino remained a hypothetical particle until American researchers proved that it was real in 1956.

There are three kinds, or flavors, of neutrinos and the laureates showed they oscillate from one flavor to another, dispelling the long-held notion that they were massless.

Kajita showed in 1998 that neutrinos captured at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan underwent a metamorphosis in the atmosphere, the academy said.

Three years later, while working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, McDonald found that neutrinos coming from the sun also switched identities.

McDonald said that scientists would still like to know the actual masses of the various forms of neutrino. And experiments are looking at whether there are other types of neutrinos beyond the three clearly observed.

Neutrinos are the second most abundant particles in the universe after photons, “so any property of neutrinos can have dramatic repercussions on the life of the universe and on its evolution,” said Antonio Ereditato, director of the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics at the University of Bern, Switzerland. “This is really one of the milestones in our understanding of nature.”

Robert G.W. Brown, chief executive officer of the American Institute of Physics, said the laureates’ work helps scientists understand how much mass exists in the universe. Brown said it’s also a success for the theory known as quantum mechanics, which deals with fundamental particles and their interactions, because that’s the only way to explain how neutrinos can change from one type to another.

“We are really down to understanding of the most fundamental aspects of science as we know them,” he said.

The winners will split the 8 million Swedish kronor (about $960,000) prize money. Each winner also gets a diploma and a gold medal at the prize ceremony on Dec. 10.

On Monday the Nobel Prize in medicine went to scientists from Japan, the U.S. and China who discovered drugs that are now used to fight malaria and other tropical diseases.

The prize announcements continue with chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award next Monday.

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