Ossigeno

98 99 O d i Ó l o s O f o r Ó l o s #O for Ólos curated by Sandro Di Domenico circadian rhythm and the art of motorcycle maintenance. an interview to jeffrey connor hall,nobel prize for medicine 2017 Jeffrey Connor Hall [New York, May 3, 1945] is an American geneticist and chronobiologist. Emeritus Professor of Biology at Brandeis University, he is currently residing in Cambridge, Maine. He spent his career examining the neurological component of courtship and behavioural rhythms of the fruit fly [ Drosophila Melanogaster ]. Through his research on neurology and Drosophila behaviour, Hall discovered the fundamental mechanisms of biological clocks and shed light on the foundations of sexual differentiation in nervous systems, being elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences for his revolutionary work in chronobiology field. Together with Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, Hall was awarded the Nobel prize for Physiology/Medicine in 2017 for their fundamental discoveries on molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm. Pick from your collection the Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup , and as you switch the record player on, turn the vinyl on its B-side, taking care to place the stylus within the last black groove. Star star - original title: Starfucker - by the Stones could help you to better imagine this man with horseshoe-shaped moustache, riding a Harley Davidson in his bowl helmet and giving a single stroke to the pedal, raising a dust curtain on a New England country road. Apart from his common name - so common in the States to include, among the homonyms, even a neo-Nazi supremacist killed in his sleep by the son who hated him - there is nothing common about Jeffrey Hall. How many chances are there that an inveterate Harley-rider having Irish blood, who lives with three bikes and six dogs in a house lost in Maine, could win a Nobel Prize? This is what happened to Professor Jeffrey Connor Hall, who discovered and demonstrated the existence of circadian rhythms in all living creatures, starting from the fruit fly up to the humans, along with his colleagues Michael Rosbash and Michael Warren Young. What follows is just a brief excerpt from a three-hour interview, initially opposed by a snowstorm worthy of the Star Wars’ ice planet of Hoth - in Professor Hall's words - about circadian rhythms and false beliefs preventing them from comprehension. All up with some crucial digressions on the importance of Abba Museum in Stockholm, on the wisdom of writer William Saroyan’s last words, on the essentiality of Tuco’s character in one of Sergio Leone's most beautiful movies. I’ve just watched your lecture for the Nobel, and you really demanded a prize for fruit flies too… It’s true. I have long appreciated, going back when I was young, that Drosophila had already fulfilled a lot of his potential in the name of research as it did since the 1960s, and I had the vague hope that there was further potential, because there is much that one can do as a researcher with fruit flies. You are allowed to do much more with them, compared with what you are allowed to do with mammals or humans. That’s why I asked for it. Well, when I first started, fruit fly research was dying. That’s what many people said.