Talk by Eminent Biologist Marks Return of SHKP Nobel Laureates Lectures

Dr. Richard J. Roberts, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1993, delivered a Sun Hung Kai Properties Nobel Laureates Distinguished Lecture on 'Friends and Foes ─ the Unseen Bugs Who Share Our Planet' on 9th December 2005 at the lecture theatre of Shaw College.

In his lecture, Dr. Roberts discussed the fascinating microscopic world of bugs, including 'friends' to human beings such as the Bifidobacteria found in yoghurt, or 'deadly foes' such as Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused the Black Death that decimated Europe in the Middle Ages. These organisms live in and on our bodies as well as in every environment, even the harshest, found on earth. Yet little is known about them.

Dr. Richard J. Roberts is an eminent molecular biologist who is currently research director at the New England Biolabs in Massachusetts, USA. He obtained a B.Sc. in chemistry and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 1965 and 1968 respectively. After finishing postdoctoral research at Harvard University in 1972, he began to work for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1977, he discovered that the genes of the adenovirus are discontinuous, that is, a given gene could be present in the genetic material (DNA) as several, well-separated segments. It has since been established that this split gene structure is common in higher organisms. The discovery of split genes has been of fundamental importance for today's basic research in biology, as well as medical research on cancer and genetic diseases. The discovery earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993, shared with Prof. Phillip A. Sharp.

Dr. Roberts' current research is in bioinformatics and the discovery and mechanism of restriction-modification systems from bacteria.