Sunday, October 01, 2006

Fissile material

The Economist reports that a researcher I had never heard of- Milind Watve - toiling in obsurity in a college I had never heard of-Abasaheb Garware College, in Pune, India- has published a very nice paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work is on the principles behind cellular division, and has shades of Economics.

The Disposable Soma Theory asserts that we age because organisms have limited resources and so need to balance the needs of keeping their bodies in good repair against those of reproduction. The resulting compromise

maximizes reproduction over a lifetime at the expense of the body's gradual deterioration


Until recently, it was assumed that the theory did not apply to unicellular organisms such as bacteria, since they have no soma to dispose of, merely a single cell that creates the next generation by dividing in two. But recent discoveries have suggested that bacteria, too, face compromises between maintaining themselves and reproducing.

Examination under a microscope shows that, sometimes, the mother cell divides her resources more or less randomly between the daughter cells, but not always. Occasionally, one of the daughter bacteria inherits nice, shiny parts from the mother, while the other gets the old parts that have been used by the mother.
Dr Watve constructed a computer model to explore the circumstances under which each strategy will be optimal, and found that the answer depends on available food.
When Dr Watve ran the model, he discovered that the main determinant of whether symmetrical or asymmetrical division was favoured was the amount of food around. In impoverished environments (in the real world, that might include lakes and oceans), the slower-growing daughters of symmetrical divisions had the upper hand because they used what little resources were available more efficiently. That was because the runts tended to die before they could reproduce, thus wasting the food that they had already eaten. In richer places, fewer runts died, and the daughters with shiny, new bits grew and divided very rapidly indeed. And that fits with the finding that bacteria inside the nutrient-rich human gut grow rapidly and in an asymmetrical manner.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket?


gaddeswarup said...

By google search. From
Plagued with all this, it is therefore no surprise that universities are starved both of good people and facilities. But they have large pools of young talented students. On the average, even in such dire conditions, a good 40 per cent of the faculty is averagely good but most of them remain inactive owing to overall apathy, intrigue and bureaucratic hassles. This is however a good latent pool which could and should be activated.

There are however some glorious exceptions where people have chosen a job in university/college in preference to an institute. But these are few and far between. In this regard, I cannot help but mention the case of Milind Watve. In preference to IISc, Bangalore he chose to join the Garware College, Pune and has carried on excellent research with undergraduate students which has been commented upon by leading journals like Science and Nature. Today he attracts students from all over the country, he has become identified with a good undergraduate biology course. This is by no means a small achievement.

Rajeev Ramachandran said...

Great..too bad such people are not more widely known- would help fight the disillusionment thats all too common