Elizabeth Blackburn

First Person | Elizabeth Blackburn Photo: © UCSF News Office One day, when Elizabeth Blackburn was about 15, mischief filled her mind. She and a friend mixed ammonia and iodine, then watched as their fellow French-language classmates reacted to the bang. "I was a bad girl," recounts Blackburn, known worldwide for her work on telomeres, the structures that stabilize the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. What's on her mind today is deciphering how the enzyme telomerase works, as it is critical to unrestricted cell growth. A cell and molecular biologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, Blackburn, 53, has earned numerous accolades and scientific academy memberships, including the National Academy of Sciences. Married to life scientist John Sedat, whom she met while at Cambridge University, Blackburn says her passion for biology emerged during her teenage years--the French class escapade not withstanding--and still consumes her. "I haven't grown up," she says, in her gentle native Australian accent. "I love the challenge of deciphering the complexity of cells. When we figure out something about them, it's a real high." Did you hesitate before accepting your post on President Bush's Council on Bioethics? I didn't. Timing is a very interesting thing. I was asked ... a few days after 9-11. I wanted to be doing something. I knew there would be diversity of opinion on this council. Had it not been for that timing, I might have said I was too busy. Do the politics bother you? It was immediately clear that such a council would be political. It only bothers me in as much that you hope people are making decisions based on the best and most rational scientific information. I know it's [politics] there ... that's the world. Is the committee accomplishing anything? I think it's focused on interesting discussions. We probably won't know until 20 years from now! Of which paper(s) are you proudest? I like most of our papers; they tend to be written when we really have a lot to say. Our 1990 Nature paper1 [is a favorite]. ... It showed that cells have amazing responses when there is a change in telomerase at the DNA template, and it showed that telomerase was important. Before, scientists thought it was a little luxury. When did you realize that telomeres have a connection to cancer and aging? I was taking parts of this puzzle and putting them together, to deduce the structure of the telomere ... I was very jazzed; thinking that there were reasons for telomerase to exist, that was exciting. And then the cancer connection--it was almost sort of self-evident. In model systems, in single cells, if they have telomerase, cells keep multiplying, like a cancer cell. We knew that if you stopped telomerase, you stopped that multiplying from happening, because cancer cells are so susceptible to [toxic telomeres]. Cancer cells are tough to kill. But they are sensitive to this, because they commit cell suicide.2 Do you check your citations? No, I would just get too depressed. Should peer-reviewed journals censor research for presumed national security purposes? It's a really tough question. It's [up to] the judgment of scientists and I think the editors. In principle, it makes me uneasy; in practice, I can see if there was a really easy formula, that could be done in the backyard, that it wouldn't be prudent [to publish]. ... I don't stand in any one place. In reality, it would be case by case. Will this censorship stifle research? I certainly hope not. If you're talking about the possibility of doing something bad, then knowledge is a good thing for battling that. You cannot know really for sure, if the line of investigation gets cut off, would it have been helpful. What do your colleagues and family give you a hard time about? I think it's because I am always trying to do too much. Everybody wants a piece of your time. What's your idea of relaxation? Of ultimate stress? Stress--that's when seven people want a piece of your time, instead of four. Relaxation? I like mystery novels ... I like zoning out, and reading these mystery stories. What is one of your earliest memories? Australia has poisonous ants, and I was handling one very gently, and my mother thought it would bite me. I remember being surprised that she was concerned about it. I must have been 3 years old. Do you have children? I have one son, who is 16. I think he is the sanest member of the household, because he is living with two overachieving scientists. What is your favorite TV show? I kind of like The Simpsons. Our son watches it, and we thought, we'd better watch TV with him. It is wonderful social commentary. ... I'm not sure I would turn it on myself. References 1. G.L. Yu et al., "In vivo alteration of telomere sequences and senescence caused by mutated Tetrahymena telomerase RNAs," Nature, 344:126-32, 1990. 2. M.M. Kim et al., "A low threshold level of expression of mutant-template telomerase RNA is sufficient to inhibit human tumor cell growth," Proc Nat Acad Sci, 98:7982-7, 2001.

Elizabeth Blackburn

The Scientist Staff

First Person | Elizabeth Blackburn

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