What is your favourite enzyme, and why?

RNA polymerase. I worked on transcription when I was younger, and I worked on the first experiments that showed that mRNA was made during transcription.

 

What is your favourite book?

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

 

What is the most recent book you’ve read?

The Ox-bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark.

 

What is your favourite amino acid, and why?

Tryptophan, because I worked on it as a graduate student.

 

What are some of your hobbies?

Photography and walking my dog.

 

What is your dream vacation?

I would like to go to Scotland to visit my daughter.

 

What is the coolest project you’ve ever worked on?

It had to do with transcription. We demonstrated the 16S, 23S, and 5S rRNA transcribe as a single unit in E. coli. I was also involved in work proving the theory of endosymbiosis.

 

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in lab?

My favourite mistakes would have to be with a fractional collector- it goes back and forth and your samples are in tubes, then you put the tubes in the wrong place, and you get a weird graph.

 

Do you have any advice or anything else you want to say?

Word hard and take it seriously. Scientifically, philosophically, and spiritually, it’s not about innovation, it’s about discovery.