Vol. 38, No. 18

1-31-2007
By: Pam Frost Gorder

Communication key to molecular architect's work

It’s the morning of the Department of Chemistry’s annual William Lloyd Evans Award Lecture, and the speaker, Julius Rebek Jr., is sitting down with a reporter. After 10 minutes of amiably rebuffing questions about his research, he has clearly taken control of the interview.

Rebek, who directs the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in California, is an expert at building molecules. But he’s not interested in discussing the applications. “That’s not why I’m doing it,” he says, “It’s all about the science.” And he’s not interested in touting any project.

He is, however, very interested in talking about communication.
Because the structures he builds are essentially invisible, Rebek has taken to combining his lectures with sophisticated 3D animations so people will understand what he does: “I just want to introduce this idea of molecules inside other molecules,” he says.

Attendees at the November lecture got to see the animations on projection screens in the renovated 1008 Evans Lab lecture hall. Distinguished University Professor Malcolm Chisholm commented that the molecules’ architecture was spectacular — “almost like something out of Star Wars or the International Space Station.”

Rebek’s Web site (hcripps.edu/skaggs/rebek) features the animations with narration. Shiny molecules rotate, and open and close to catch smaller molecules inside, while Rebek’s own voice gives the play-by-play. Among his achievements is the development of custom molecules that flex this way or that way on cue and carry particular cargo.

He’s given the molecules names that appeal to the senses and at the same time communicate their overall shapes: the football, the volleyball, the tennis ball. Then there’s the hamburger and the jelly doughnut.

Rebek is very proud of the Web site, which was designed by his son, Arash. The animations recruit students to his laboratory, and the audio gives them a primer on how to pronounce words like “adamantanedione.”

Many of his students go on to the pharmaceutical industry, where molecules are being developed as drugs and as devices to deliver drugs in the body. Still, Rebek doesn’t care how his graduates apply what they’ve learned, as long as they’re happy and his own basic research continues.

And there’s a new skill he wants to learn himself — science writing.

In the 1990s, he wrote a story for Scientific American. Though he tried to explain his work in the simplest way possible, the editors still made substantial revisions. “That was really disappointing,” he said. “Maybe I just don’t get it, writing for the general public.”

Maybe he doesn’t “get” science writing just yet, but his Web site suggests that he understands communication. He made the same point when he credited former Skaggs Institute research associate Lubomir Sebo with creating the animations: “If a picture is worth a thousand words, Sebo has shown that a video can replace whole languages.”

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