Nobel Laureate Lecture at UKM, Bangi
http://osweld.wordpress.com, 16 March 2009

http://osweld.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/nobel-laureate-lecture-at-ukm-bangi/

It came quite suddenly that we were told that there’s a Nobel Laureate lecture by Prof. Dr. Howard Robert Horvitz of the USA. Apparently he was the Nobel price winner in medicine in the year 2002. His topic was Biomedical Science, World Health and World Peace. This was actually organised buy the non-political and non-religious body known as the Peace Foundation and is a program called Bridges held in Malaysia and Thailand.


His papers were published and his researh with his team was in the finding of program cell death or the scientific term for this is apoptosis. Well, normally people long thought that apoptosis is a natural occuring phenomenon but his research leads the findings of ced-3 and ced-4 genes and ced-9 genes that are all the causal factors interating with each other and the also the finding of ergl gene that explain why cell dies. His research was done using roundworms called C. elegans which lives in the soil and have a few hundreds of cells in total which helps him to do his research and relates to the death of human cells.



Nice lecture. In fact, I’d learned a lot from the 2-hour lecture. It’s such an honour to meet a Nobel Price Winner and to have him autographed my booklet issued prior to our entrance to the Senat Room in Bangi. And the best part was, we got to chat a bit with him until we were forced to leave the room and he was on a tight schedule to go to KL for press conference (was told that).
Well in the beginning of his lecture, he introduced some of his work while showed some of his research team, and the highlight of the lecture was his picture taken with Barrak Obama, the president of USA last Monday, showing Barrack Obama signing a paper to leash all American general research in genetics including stem cells. Genetics research is to be all approved by the White House.

Posted by osweld

2. LiZaRdboi88 said
March 17, 2009 at 6:52 am
He will be coming to USM too! Saw the banner around USM.