Jack Szostak, 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (telomeres, telomerase), did a Q&A session in class Tuesday. He is currently trying to get biology to emerge from the physical and chemical.  Genesis.

Sometimes a picture is all you need.

And sometimes, you gotta get up close.

Photo credits: Tara Carson

Yesterday, our first guest instructor, Mary Beth Williams, talked about nanotechnology.  She’s a chilli hot chemistry prof, and excellent for the students: like me, most of them have yet to recover from their chemistry ‘education’. Two comments came up on the comment wall which Mary Beth did not get time to answer.  She does now:

1. Would people try to become God by spontaneously creating things with nano tech?
This is an enormously complex question because I think at the heart of it you are asking about scientific ethics. However no scientist can spontaneously create life. But do scientists, in general, create things that have the potential to impact living things around them? Yes. They make drugs that save lives, modify plants so that they grow in droughts, and discover how DNA encodes age with telomeres. Scientists, like everyone, have to make decisions about the ethical and moral implications of their work; in the context of scientific research, it is the potential outcomes and use of research – good and bad – that is the subject of these decisions and dilemmas.  Moral and ethical decision making in science could be the subject of another course altogether….

2.  If we drink the gold stuff [your nano solution] will we start laying golden eggs?  or would we just have sparkly poop?
Well, we all know that what goes in must come out….one way or the other, although I doubt anyone in the room actually lays eggs of any sort.  But if you were to drink the nanogold solution, remember that it’s red, not sparkly, and it would be a very, very small amount so it would not be worth it to pan for gold.

Also a hit with the class was the notion of nano-condoms.  It’s amazing where nano particles are going.  One of the students asked Mary Beth whether she would recommend them over Trojan.  Nothing is sacred in my class.

There is something wrong with the students in this year’s class.  Or me.

Second, prompted by one of the Otago Zoology Class of ’84, I talked about a recent paper on why fingers and toes wrinkle in the bath tub.  [Wrinkling may be a controlled shift from dry-weather to wet-weather tire tread.  No kidding.]  I tested the story on my kids, my wife, and my graduate students, all of whom thought it a cool yarn.  But when I finish telling the class, they are just sitting there, no reaction. I wait.  Nothing happens. Zip. Nada. So I say, Was that cool? Nothing. Really, you don’t find that cool? More nothingness. On my way back to the podium, I get steamed up. OK, which of you found that cool? Hands up NOW. About half of them put their hands up. 

Third, worrying that Monty Hall and wrinkles were for nerds only, I rearranged my running order and bumped up ‘Does prayer heal?’. Last year, that topic caused a near riot. This year, a few questions.

So, what gives? Maybe this stuff is uninteresting, in which case I am the wrong guy for this job. But an even worse hypothesis is that last year’s class were mostly freshmen, while this year’s class are mostly old timers. Is it possible that experienced students are less emotional, even world weary and cynical? The undead? Might be me soon.