'Some people play bingo. Others watch TV. Some people play chess. I play science,' says 93-year-old biochemistry professor Jack Strominger. (WBUR)
He's such a star that when his son, the renowned physicist, won Silicon Valley's big-money"Breakthrough Prize," the limelight inexorably shifted his way.
Strominger's son, Andrew, puts it differently:"It's doing something that you love. And he just loves it. And it is a wonderful occupation. We live in an incredible universe, and it's just a great thrill to discover it."Jack Strominger admits he's a scientific thrill-seeker, and always has been, ever since a quirk of fate landed him — an MD, not a PhD — in his own fully funded NIH lab at the crazy-young age of 26.
Fast-forward 25 years. Strominger and colleagues, primarily the late crystallographer Don Wiley, made a: the molecular structure that lets the immune system decide if a cell is infected and should be killed. In Strominger's Harvard lab, researcher Tamara Tilburgs removes a fresh human placenta from its plastic container. The baby it used to nourish has been born, and the placenta has been donated to science.So it is. It's a very impressive organ, resembling a big purple hamburger patty encased in white membranes, with a foot or two of white umbilical cord snaking out of it. And it's all the more impressive when you consider that it grows nearly as big as a frisbee in a matter of months.
"He's successful at getting grants because he's a great scientist. Because he's curious. Because he asks the right questions."Strominger focuses particularly on a group of special immune molecules in the placenta."One of the molecules, HLA-C, has a dual role both in tolerance and in infection, and I'm really curious how it's regulated," he says.
"He's successful at getting grants because he's a great scientist. Because he's curious," she says."Because he asks the right questions." Chiu started working in Strominger's lab when he was still in high school. Now he's an assistant professor of immunology at Harvard — and still inspired by him.
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