Biochemist and molecular biologistContents
Introduction
Summary of career
Extract from interview and focus questions
Activities
Keywords
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Associate Professor Bryan Fry was interviewed in 2011 for the Interviews with Australian Scientists series. By viewing the interviews in this series or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge and view science as a human endeavour. These interviews tie into the Australian Curriculum sub-strand ‘Nature and development of science’.
The following summary of Associate Professor Bryan Fry’s career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers’ notes. The extract discusses venom evolution and using drug-design as an argument for conservation. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.
Bryan Grieg Fry was born in the USA in 1970. He graduated from the Portland State University Honours Program with a dual degree in Molecular Biology (BSc) and Scientific Philosophy, with a minor in Psychology (BA) (1990-95). Drawn to Australia by its numerous toxic creatures, Fry completed a PhD from the University of Queensland on the toxic natriuretic peptides of the inland taipan (1997-2000, awarded in 2002). In 2000 he worked as a research assistant at the Australian Venom Research Unit (AVRU) at the University of Melbourne. Fry then took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the National University of Singapore (2001-02) which allowed him to work on Asian snakes and build on his research into snake venom evolution. Fry returned to Australia and the University of Melbourne as deputy director and ARC postdoctoral fellow at the AVRU (2003-06). In 2007 Fry joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne as an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow (2007-11). Fry is now associate professor at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland where he is group leader of the Venomics Laboratory. His work at the University of Queensland is currently supported by an ARC Future fellowship.
Associate Professor Fry received the 2007 JG Russell award and the 2011 Fenner medal from the Australian Academy of Science.
Venom evolution
You were awarded the 2011 Fenner Medal from the Australian Academy of Science for research in biology, specifically for advances in our understanding of venom protein evolution. How did venom evolve? What did you find?
Venom doesn't come out of thin air. There isn't a little intelligent design fairy that comes by and goes ‘Poof, have another venom molecule.’ The building blocks come from the body somehow. A perfect example or, two good examples are from tiger snakes. Their venom does absolutely devastating things to the blood chemistry. Their venom has a mutated form of a blood coagulation enzyme called factor 10. It has been mutated so that it is 1,000-fold more active and 100-fold more resistant to being broken down by the normal regulatory enzymes. It is a good example of a massive overdose. In fact it is no different than if we just kept infusing you with massive amounts of normal human recombinant factor 10. You would have the same clinical pathology as you would from a tiger snake bite, which ultimately can involve bleeding in the brain and other fun and exciting things like that. But it shows the very simple way that venoms evolve from other things.
Another way for the venoms to evolve is to make a molecule that gives you an underdose. With things like a death adder, their venom is chockers full of a modified neuropeptide, so instead of turning something off, it just sits there and blocks the receptor. Therefore none of our normal acetylcholine can get through and none of the messages can get through. You lose all control of the muscles and death is from respiratory arrest. If you can't move the diaphragm, you can’t inflate the lungs. If you can't inflate the lungs, you don't get any air. If you don’t get any air, you are not going to live very long. So the tiger snake and the death adder are good examples of the two basic ways that venom evolution happens – an overdose scenario or an underdose scenario. The venoms evolved to use the body's building blocks against its victim – weaponising the proteins. There are lots of different mutations selected by evolutionary processes after that, to confer entirely new activities.
Conservation through commercialisation
I understand that there are also medical applications. Perhaps you could explain some of those.
Venoms already have had a very long and profitable history in drug design development. There are two good examples. If you know of anybody taking high blood pressure medication, the odds are that they are taking a class of compound called ACE inhibitors. The medical importance of the drug class cannot be overstated. A founding member of that entire multibillion-dollar drug class that has saved countless lives was a snake toxin. That has been one of the rampant drug development success stories not just of a venom-derived compound but of any drug class. That is one of the most successful. There is also now a new diabetes treatment that is from the venom of the Gila monster, one of the lizards. That is also drug yielding multibillion-dollar profits.
You have all these natural resources waiting for you. When people ask me, ‘What’s the best way that I can convince people to conserve?’ I say, ‘Your weakest argument is to talk about how beautiful and wonderful these animals are, because the only people who are going to appreciate that are the people who already think that way. You are preaching to the choir.’ Your strongest argument is basically conservation through commercialisation. People who don’t care about venomous animals or nature in general are not going to be swayed by the argument, ‘We need to conserve because they are awesome.’ That is not going to get them. But, if you talk to them about wiping out a forest being no different to taking our mineral wealth in the Kimberley and blowing it up or throwing it in the ocean – it is the same economic destruction. You can’t predict where the next wonder drug will come from. Often it is from the most unlikely of sources, like an ugly lizard or a horrible snake, that we have these wonder drugs that aren’t just saving lives but are making a lot of people a lot of money. You therefore need to view it as a resource. Imagine if we treated our banking sector the way we treat our environment. Oh yeah, the banking sector is a bit of a mess too, isn’t it?
An edited transcript of the full interview can be found at
http://www.science.org.au/node/325876
Focus questions
Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. These activities align with the Australian Curriculum strands ‘Science Understanding’, ‘Science as a Human Endeavour’ and ‘Science Inquiry Skills’, as well as the New South Wales syllabus Stage 5 Science outcomes 5.8.3; Stage 6 Biology outcomes 8.4.4, 8.5.4, 9.3.1 and 9.7.8 and Stage 6 Senior Science outcomes 8.5.4 and 9.7.3. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.
commercialisation
conservation
drug design
evolution
molecule
mutation
toxin
protein
venom
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