Covid, DNA and Fred

DNA Day celebrates Fred Sanger who is one of the reasons why we have been able to both track Covid strains and develop vaccines so fast. So here is a brief resume of the scientist who won two Nobel prizes.

**LINK**

regards Martin

Thanks Martin it's good to remember these unsung pioneers in whatever field they achieve fame.

Martin

We're hanging on with our fingernails to good modern Tech like DNA, chip design, space tech etc

Amazing skills

No,, no, no, it's 'services' ,law, banking, skills that we need to pay for everything.

Or so the 'Government' keep telling me.

I don't know about fingernails, the LMB won another 8 Nobels since Freds second in 1980 the last two in 2017 and 2018 for Cryo-Electronmicroscopy (molecular structure of biological macromolecules) and Phage display for fast antibody discovery (Pharmaceutical development).

Two new world class research intitutes opened in the last decade. A new home for the LMB in Cambridge and the Crick institute next to Kings Cross in London. The UK is world class in Biotech.

regards Martin

Unfortunatly we are not holding on to engineering in biotech. I once worked for a small british company who were world leaders in some of the automatic instruments used in genome sequencing and research. They floated on the stock exchange and a few years later were taken over by a big American group and a couple of years later the UK operation was closed down. The only sign of their name with the American company is on their list of patents (may name is on a few of them too). I moved back to aerospace.

We are not very good at paying for Biotech in the UK. My nephew and his wife moved to Australia for more secure post-doc funding after getting their PhDs in Cambridge both in Bio type stuff.

Interesting ..... Exactly the same thing happened to me in Canada although in this case the "big group" was Bayer (" which must be pronounced 'Byer' " ... under pain of something or other).