Handstands by Hydra

"Please ask me why I became a botanist." This was the request I heard from this grown man who has had a few glasses of wine. He was part of a group of natural scientists with whom I had a chance to explore a few years ago. He, with the other scientists, made our exploration of the Galapagos Islands so much richer and interesting then. I am a sucker for stories so I asked. It turned out that he and his brother always went out to watch birds with their father when they were young boys. When their father spotted a bird, he would first hand the binoculars to the older boy (not the botanist) and while waiting for his turn, my botanist-friend would twiddle with the leaves and the branches of nearby trees and shrubs. In fact, by the time the binoculars were handed to the botanist, the bird had already flown away. So there, he became a botanist (the older boy, of course, became an ornithologist) because there was only one set of binoculars for two boys and he was younger and the bird could not wait till all got their view. But of course, now, he has his own gadgets but that got me to thinking of some interesting stories on how personal fascinations by dedicated scientific minds have changed the world and our view of it.

John Sulston, the 2002 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, was given an old microscope by his uncle when he was a very young boy and he said he was just so fascinated watching Hydra "doing its crazy handstands." (Hydra is any of small, aquatic, free-living animals that have a simple, hollow, cylindrical, two-layered body surrounded at one end by tentacles. They move funnily by gliding or by somersaulting). In the book he co-wrote with science writer Georgina Ferry (The Common Thread, A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome, The Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2001), he also tells us that he really did not know or understand yet what the point was when in the 70s he gassed freeze-dried tissue sections from a nematode (worm) with formaldehyde. But the reaction resulted in some "fluorescent derivative of neurotransmitters adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine" so that the cells glowed when viewed under a microscope. Sulston thought it was simply cool that he could do that trick but his fascination with working on worms and genetics, led years later to the mapping and sequencing of the human genome, which he also fought for to be accessible for free to all and not to be under any corporate control. These map and sequence hold the key to our biological lives and characters, the codes which tell us the diseases we are given to, the switches that prevent us from growing legs on our heads, or tentacles. It is all the bio-chemical information that makes us the human species that we are.

Galileo, in 1609, set up a telescope behind his garden and he saw the Milky Way, the Moon’s "pockmarked" perfection. He remarked: "I render infinite thanks to God for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries." But despite his acknowledgment of permission from the Divine, he was still sanctioned by the Church and was told that what he was theorizing about, i.e., the movement of heavenly bodies, had already been dealt with by the "Psalms, Book of Joshua, and elsewhere in the Bible" and that these were issues "best left to the Holy Fathers of the Church." But even as he obeyed the orders to be silent, he turned from the very large heavenly bodies to the very small, developing the compound microscope. Upon viewing life in this scale, he expressed awe and admiration, saying, "I have observed many tiny animals with great admiration, among which the flea is quite horrible, the gnat and the moth very beautiful; and with great satisfaction I have seen how flies and other little animals can walk attached to mirrors, upside down." (Dava Sobel. Galileo’s Daughter, Penguin Books, NY 2000).

My eight-year-old nephew and I spent sometime lately near the sea brewing what he says is the potion that will make us immortal to flames. It involves sea anemone and green Hydra. He says I should get the Hydra and the sea anemone and he will work on securing a cauldron and the right magic spells. He also said I should not announce this to people since the spell will lose its charm. He is so unaware that someone fascinated with Hydra as a boy, has now literally spelled out his bio-chemical make-up, providing a bio-chemical blueprint of what it means to be human. We are still working on the potion. We will let you know when we have come to a scientific revolution.