Robert G. Roeder

First Person | Robert G. Roeder Courtesy of The Rockefeller University Robert G. Roeder, raised on a Booneville, Indiana farm, is grateful that his parents were religious. Laboring before and after school and every Saturday, he appreciated the requisite day of rest. Lifting 100-pound feedbags gave Roeder (pronounced RAY-dur) the build to play high-school football and the work ethic to graduate valedictorian. Indeed, hard work and long hours drove his career as a biochemist, teasing apart the complex nature of eukaryotic transcriptional control. "Most of my life--it was then and it is now spent in the laboratory," he says. Now, at 61, the Rockefeller lab head and winner of the 2003 Lasker Award for basic biomedical research juggles to fulfill lab duties, ruing lost time to be by himself or with his two-year-old daughter. A recent beautiful Sunday in New York was spent in his office, not in Central Park. But the myriad promises made to associates came first. "I'm an incredible optimist about how much I can get done in a limited amount of time." How did your father react to you becoming a scientist? My parents were of German extraction and they were really hard working, diligent people. My father's ambition was to keep his three sons on the farm and to expand the farm into a larger operation. It was never possible, as my research proceeded, to explain to him the relevance of what I was doing. Mentioning that I was working on frogs was very far removed from being a physician working on people. Eventually it was clear to him that I was going to remain in the academic world and he didn't have too much to say about it. What is your favorite paper? My first paper, for lots of reasons. This is the Nature paper describing the resolution of three RNA polymerases.1 It launched the biochemical analysis of transcription in eukaryotes. It also meant I was going to get a thesis. As it turns out, my thesis was my last three months of work. The paper that was published in exactly the same form was initially rejected by Nature on the grounds that it was not of general interest. What changed Nature's decision? My mentor [Chiron's co-founder] Bill Rutter, who at the time was certainly more forceful than I. I don't know exactly what he said to them, but it would have had to have been something like, 'Are you crazy?' What interests you outside of the lab? My two-year-old daughter is the most fascinating thing in the world right now because she's at this learning stage. And when my older children were at that stage, I was a struggling assistant professor worrying about different things. What was it like attending graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle after leaving Indiana? One of the things I'm most infatuated with in life is sushi bars, and I got to appreciate actually Chinese food as well as Japanese food in Seattle. What was your first experience with sushi? The first time I didn't really realize what it was. Of course, the organism with which I had worked the most and which I had collected was sea urchins. That was actually one of few opportunities for excursions I got from the laboratory. Occasionally I would get there [the Straits of Juan de Fuca] and find that there had been a mass slaughter of the urchins. I was told the local native American population enjoyed sushi as well. If you were not a scientist, what would you be? An architect-this is such an easy question-because I love just drawing and designing. I am actually very good, I think, with my hands. When I was working in the laboratory, and unfortunately I do not any more, what I really enjoyed about biochemistry was that it was basically an experimental science. You think about experiments and you carry them out with your hands. These days the main scientific activity with my hands is holding the telephone. Do you have a favorite movie? Blazing Saddles, that's a classic. I don't like the standard Hollywood movies. What's something about you that nobody knows? Few people appreciate how really shy I am about public speaking and interaction with people, especially people who are socialites or dominant figures in a field. A couple of things [my parents] taught me that were important for my success were the value of hard work and diligence, but they also taught me to speak when spoken to. And I think they're the source of this insecurity. Regarding your Nature Medicine commentary2 for the Lasker awards: Do you still foresee unexpected complexity? Had I appreciated how complex this whole business was I might have chosen to work on Escherichia coli... No, that's not true. I would have accepted the challenge. References 1. R.G. Roeder, W.J. Rutter, "Multiple forms of DNA-dependent RNA polymerase in Eukaryotic organisms," Nature, 224: 234-7, 1969. 2. R.G. Roeder, "The Eukaryotic transcription machinery: complexities and mechanisms unforeseen," Nat Med, in press. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Robert G. Roeder

The Scientist Staff

First Person | Robert G. Roeder

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