In this last of five Nature Videos from this year's Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Physiology and Medicine Nobel laureate Oliver Smithies talks with Diego Bohórquez from Duke University (USA) about being hungry for knowledge.

Oliver Smithies, 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Diego Bohórquez, Duke University, USA

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Elizabeth Blackburn grew up in Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania. It was a long journey from there to a Nobel prize and the lab she runs at the University of California in San Francisco. Malaria researcher Clare Smith is also a Hobart girl, and she’s trying to decide whether to follow in Blackburn’s footsteps and move overseas after she finishes her PhD. Karina Zillner is from Germany. Like Clare, she’s in the final stages of a PhD.  She’s developed a method for analysing sections of repetitive DNA.  Karina hopes her Eltechnique might be used in Blackburn’s lab, where they study telomeres — repetitive sections of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes.  (More)

Camelia-Lucia Cimpianu is trying to decide between a career as a researcher or a practising doctor. In this film, she seeks advice from Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad who faced the same dilemma as a medical student in the 1960s. Murad chose the bench, and he subsequently discovered that a gas called nitric oxide (NO) acts as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system. It turns out that NO plays a role in many diseases — and possibly in the head trauma cases that Camelia studies.

Ferid Murad, 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Camelia-Lucia Cimpianu, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany

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In the next video of the Nature video team in cooperation with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Nobel laureate Eddi Fischer talks to a young researcher from China, Tong Qing, about ways to combat cancer.

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As last year, the Nature video team in cooperation with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings filmed discussions between one or two young researchers and a Nobel laureate about current research topics in Physiology and Medicine, the world’s greatest health challenges and how to tackle them. Today we may present the trailer and the first of five such videos.

The young researchers the team follows in these films are working on malaria, cancer, viruses and more. They are also learning how to be scientists; how to write grant applications, how to collaborate with other research groups, and how to find the right career path. See what advice the laureates offer — and what questions the laureates have for them. (More)

Kelly Quesnelle: I came to Lindau as many students nearing the end of their doctoral studies: somewhat disillusioned by the tenacious nature of academic science that I have come to realize in graduate school and in search of inspiration for my future. 

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Strawberry red, tangerine orange, banana yellow, honeydew green and plum purple. These are some of the cheesy names for the glowing molecules that were developed in Roger Tsien’s laboratory. To be fair, these names do make one thing clear: Roger Tsien has managed to design and produce fluorescent molecules of almost every colour in the rainbow.

Some might wonder why creating glowing molecules would earn someone a Nobel prize. Does the world really need more different coloured glow-sticks? Yes, of course it does! Plus, fluorescent molecules have become a standard tool in the biologist’s toolbox. Biologists tack these glowing molecules to proteins, so that they can track where in the cell it is located, or where in the body a certain genes is expressed.  (More)

Seven young researchers have become video experts during the last weeks and will do even more this week. They have interviewed their supporters back home, did a actual home story of their lives and will show us their Lindau experiences from now on.  

Before we start I'd like to introduce the team (five women and two men) to you:  (More)

Even if you adore red meat, you'll put off your big juicy steak by hearing what Harald zur Hausen has to say about it. At the 61st Lindau meeting, the Nobel laureate spoke about his current hypothesis about why beef causes colorectal cancer. He thinks it might contain a nasty pathogen that infects us that then causes the disease but the source hasn't been discovered yet.

Colorectal cancer has a high incidence among men and women worldwide, and cases are increasing. Researchers blame this on the 'Westernisation' of lifestyles, including eating more red meat, in economically transitioning countries, such as China. 

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lindaunobelMadhurima Benekareddy is a 27-year-old researcher standing at the cross-roads of psychology and neuroscience. She researches the effects of trauma on the brain in its delicate stages of development, when we are children and adolescents, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. The young brain is more plastic, and therefore can be particularly badly affected by negative - or positive - events. Trauma can even be passed down the generations. Benekareddy's area of study focuses on serotonin receptors in the brain. Benekareddy's work should interest all of us, especially parents.

I catch up with Benekareddy over email just as the 61st Meeting of the Nobel Laureates in Lindau begins to kick off. I will find her later in the week and see how she is getting on, what she is learning, and what she is enjoying. In the meantime, you can read her answers to my questions:

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Yesterday's opening ceremony was concluded with a panel session that featured Bill Gates, Nobel laureate Ada Yonath, Sandra Chisamba and Jonathan Carlson. Together they discussed how we should deal with threats to global health, such as HIV and malaria, and how young scientists could be stimulated to research these important, but relatively neglected topics.  (More)

The panel on global health at the opening ceremony of the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau well and truly laid the gauntlet down to young researchers from around the world. On the panel was: Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Ada Yonath, Noble Laureate in Chemistry 2009 for her groundbreaking crystallography work revealing the structure and function of the ribosome; Sandra Chishimba, a malaria researcher from Zambia; and Jonathan Carlson, a researcher into HIV/AIDS at Microsoft Research.

Bill Gates said that we must pay more attention to the 'silent voices' in poor countries, who don't have their medical needs met by funding from their governments or companies. It sounds unbelievable, but he told us that 10 times more research funding goes into finding a cure for male baldness than finding a cure for malaria - which kills 850,000 people a year.   

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Today the 61. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting will be openend and Sandra Chishimba will play a special role: She will take part at a panel discussion together with Bill Gates, Nobel Laureate Ada Yonath (Chemistry 2009) and Jonathan Carlson (Microsoft Research) - maybe because Malaria is the main topic of her life. She has battled malaria both in and out of the lab. In high school, Sandra suffered from multiple occurrences of malaria, which often affected her school work. Her whole family has suffered from malaria (her brother, two sisters, parents…). So her unfortunate familiarity with malaria spurred a desire to help fight and eradicate this disease that affects so many people, particularly in developing nations.  (More)

An inspiration from the birth of aviation

A few weeks ago I visited the small coastal town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. Kitty Hawk is where the Wright brothers made their epoch-making first powered flight. Big stones mark the start and end points of the flight. There is a huge monument on top of a hill where they took off and then there are three stones at varying distances at ground level. The three stones indicate the distances covered on every flight; the brothers clearly got better at flying on every attempt.
The Wright brothers' story is inspiring not only because of the watershed in human history which they orchestrated but also because it shows the evolution of a technology at its best. The projects which the brothers undertook cost a few hundred dollars and should serve as a beacon of inspiration in this era of "big science" involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The brothers had a bicycle workshop in which they fashioned many of the components of their infant gliders. They drew inspiration from Otto Lillienthal who had been the first aviation pioneer to make successful glided flights; tragically, Lillienthal was killed on one of his flights, but not before saying "Kleine Opfer müssen gebracht werden!" ("Small sacrifices must be made!"). One of the most important lessons that the Wrights learn from Lillienthal's adventures was the great value of building 'toy' models. Toy models start from the simplest possible systems which retain the essential features of a phenomenon and then work their way towards greater complexity. This philosophy has been used by many other pioneers of technology, including the scientists and engineers who made the moon landings possible.  (More)