NON-FERMI LIQUIDS TO ENDOSOMES, VIA pH JUMPS

About my Journey in Science, Written in 2009

Roop Mallik

Fifteen years ago, I was not exactly sure what to do with myself. I had just completed a Masters in Physics, and unlike others I knew, did not have a role model or any burning ambition. All I knew about Research was that nobody else around me wanted to go there. So, I played a lot of cricket and waited for something to happen to me. That “something” was a newspaper clipping of the TIFR graduate school advertisement mailed to me by a concerned uncle in Kolkata (which, as some may know, is the happening place for young Indian scientists in the making).

Two rounds of interviews, a cup of tea at the corner table of the TIFR West canteen on a rainy afternoon, and a walk along the seaside left an indelible impression on my mind. I managed to get selected, and in a few months was back again in TIFR. It was special to sit in the TIFR bus and go out into the city, to feel different from those outside for the first time. And then, the fun started. Long hours of sitting through classes and longer nights in the company of Jackson and Goldstein. I have never been more envious of anybody in my life than the dogs that would always laze around in the TIFR colonnade as I trudged wearily to class. Their grandchildren still continue that lazy tradition.

I finally joined E.V. Sampathkumaran’s Lab in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and took the first tottering steps of my PhD under his watchful guidance. Being the only student in the Lab in a remote corner of the TIFR basement was intimidating to begin with, but I quickly learnt to enjoy my independence. I soon knew what to do when the superconducting magnet threatened to quench at 2:30 in the night. I mixed metals in precise ratio’s to coax strange magnetism out of the resulting alloys. I wrote software so that the experiments could be run on autopilot, so that I could follow the cricket test match while simultaneously discovering non-Fermi liquid behaviour in the mixtures I had made. My early life at TIFR prepared me to stand on my own feet. I learnt science, but more importantly, I discovered my own way of doing science.

I had more than my share of friends — those from late-night tea in East Canteen, friends from playing cricket for hostel day, friends from hiking around in the hills and so on. We were all struggling through graduate school, and everybody had a story to tell over tea. Somebody would be worried about when a naked singularity might collapse, others would be trying to align an errant laser, while yet others checked if flies could walk straight after smelling butane. I soon knew that there was much more Matter outside Condensed Matter. The sediments of all those stories and the belief that I had found my way of doing science led me to other pastures after my PhD.

I soon found myself shooting lasers to induce pH jumps, and then measuring how fast the released protons found their way into the core of a protein. My new colleagues in Chemical Sciences watched with amusement as the new postdoc blundered around trying to dialyze proteins. But for their kindness and good will, I would not have gone too far on this new path. Soon, I crossed the seas to start a second postdoc with Steve Gross in California. I enjoyed Steve’s  mentorship, and gradually found my feet in biology. Strangely, I was never too concerned about how little I knew. I decided that there was no easy way to change this … so I would try to learn, but on the way I would also enjoy my ignorance. One thing followed another and somewhere along the way I became a “proper” biologist, so much so that the Biology department in TIFR offered me a job !! I had never taken a course in biology all my life. What on earth was I going to do now? What does one need to run a Biology Lab? Who in their right minds would join my Lab?

As I look back over these years of being a biologist, nobody is more surprised than myself at having a Lab that actually runs. In these years I have had the unwavering support of colleagues within Biology and outside. Equally satisfying is how little memories from the past have helped in setting up the Lab. Now, we worry about how vesicles in cells get pulled around by Motor proteins. To do this, we have gone down to the old basement Lab to get GE varnish to stick down a laser head. An old Faraday balance has inspired us to make a much smaller version and exert magnetic force on things that move inside cells. The enthusiasm and interest of colleagues across these borders of science has been reassuring. Slowly but surely I have gone far away from where I started in science. That being said, what I learnt during those formative years has allowed me to do so. If you asked me what exactly was learnt, I would be clueless. I can only remember some weird experiments and strange stories mixed with the faint fragrance of tea.