Reunion with a high school text book

To tell the truth, I have forgotten all about it. I mean, who would ever remember letting someone borrow a book you know you probably won't be using again? But them here it is, a text book I used during my freshman year in high school got back to me. It seems a friend, a batch younger than me, borrowed my Social Science I book - Socio-Economic Development and Progress. I don't even remember ever using it. Well oh well... What I remember vividly were the group quiz contests my social studies teacher would give. First, there was the game similar to baseball, a correct answer is equivalent to a base. A very difficult question gives you a home run. I got a home run for my group for answering "Martina Navratilova". I can't even remember the question asked. I know it was just a guess, something to do with a female tennis player and she was the only one I knew. Another contest, the teacher asked a current events question on the latest typhoon to hit the Philippines. My classmate couldn't recall that it was typhoon Sisang. To give a clue, his classmates were dramatizing "Crispin, Basilio..." the dialog of Sisa in Noli Me Tangere. And he still couldn't guess it! There was also a question on who are the member-nations of the Asean. I think the Asean Summit was held in Manila then. There were five or six members - Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. My classmate had a hard time guessing the sixth country - the Philippines! I can also remember Mr Ines, our social studies teacher, demonstrating a topic in class using TV commercials, sabay muestra ng "I can feel it" with matching toss of the hair ala Alice Dixon of the Palmolive shampoo commercial. Come to think of it, is Palmolive shampoo still available these days? That year was 1987, when we also experienced the first coup. We had a discussion on what a coup is and would be its effects on the Philippines as a whole.

To get back to the book (I really can't remember using it!), I'm just scanning it now. Oh oh, it seems I am wrong again. It's supposed to be for third year high school. I got the wrong memory associated with the book. Well, if it is for 3rd year, well, what stood out were the tsoknut and belekoy my Economics teacher used as examples to demonstrate Law of Supply and Demand and virtually all principles in economics we tackled. I did not know what tsoknut and belekoy was having grown up in Iligan City, I was very curious what were they. At the end of the school, Ms Negre brought tsoknut and belekoy for the whole class (four sections in all). That is why, I cannot eat tsoknut without remembering Ms. Negre and the Law of Supply and Demand.

I am disgressing from my topic again. Well to get back again to the book, it was published in 1987. Some points I can glean from the book:

• Back in 1987, the world population is at 5 billion of which 3.75 billion are considered poor. A person is considered absolutely poor if his income is below the poverty line. "Poverty line" seems to be the byword in the 80's. I heard it a lot in high school especially when the state of the nation's economy is being discussed. Lately, I haven't "poverty line" though I know for sure a majority of Filipinos live below poverty line.
• In terms of classification of countries, poor countries were called "backward", then became underdeveloped to less developed vs more developed. A more diplomatic term became popular, calling them "developing countries." Now it is Third World, to stress their political nonalignment in contrast to First World (North Atlantic countries) and the Second World (socialist countries of Eastern Europe).
• The GNP Per Capita (in US dollars) of the Philippines for 1984 is 660, ranking #46 and classified as lower-middle income. The US ranker #119, with 15,390 dollars GNP per capita. What a contrast! I wonder where we are now.
• What are common characteristics of developing countries? Low levels of living, low levels of productivity, high and rising levels of unemployment and underemployment, and dependence of on agriculture and on primary products as sources of foreign exchange. These days, we are not dependent only on agriculture, we also export people to get that much needed dollars.
• The distribution of income among Filipino families is lopsided in favor of the rich. The richest ten percent of our families owned or produced 37 % of our total income, while 80% of our families shared among themselves only 47.5% of the nation's income in 1985. Did these figures after all the Edsas we went through?
• In 1985, our povert line was P2,382.00. About 5,676,600 families or 59.3% of all families lived below the poverty line in 1985.

These all seems so alien now. I haven't really thought about the Philippines in economic terms. Life has been filled with sciences - teaching genetics and molecular biology and lately, my research on rice diseases. I sometimes stop and think if my science is relevant to Philippine economy. I do hope so.

Of gene expression and self expression

I wrote this essay a few years ago, as part of an application process to attend a workshop on gene expression and microarray. I got accepted and had to visit The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, MD.

Here goes:

One of the major constraints to rice production is the variety of diseases present in different rice growing environments. The most viable practice to manage rice disease is still through the use of resistant cultivars. Over the years, it has been found that the use of major genes (R genes) for disease resistance are not the only strategy needed to combat a diverse array of pathogens. Genes downstream from the R genes also contribute to the overall defense response to pathogens. It has also come to light that there is cross-talk between metabolic pathways related to responses to different pathogens.
What genes are expressed in response to a particular pathogen? What genes are commonly expressed in response to more than one pathogen? Can we pool a combination of these genes to come up with a variety exhibiting broad spectrum resistance to multiple pathogens? These are the questions that have guided my PhD dissertation in the last four years. By integrating molecular, phenotypic and in silico approaches to studying broad spectrum to fungal pathogens of rice, we have identified several promising lines that are more resistant to rice blast across multiple environments. By analyzing the functional annotation, organization and characteristics of each candidate genes, we were able to validate genetic mapping data with the rice physical map and generate additional molecular markers for analysis. We have developed PCR markers for defense response candidate genes that are now being used for other mapping populations of rice. We have shown that by marker-assisted selection, candidate genes with quantitative effects may be combined efficiently. I hope I would be able to answer in the course of my PhD dissertation at the International Rice Research Institute. I am currently working on rice mutants exhibiting loss of resistance to rice blast, as well as to bacterial blight. We have started testing their reaction to the sheath blight and brown spot pathogens. I am also working on Vandana x Moroberekan rice population which exhibit quantitative resistance to rice blast. We have made intercrosses of progenies from this cross to pool different mechanisms of resistance to a single plant. These mechanisms of resistance are candidate genes identified from multiple experiments. However, these candidate genes may not be the only genes involved in quantitative resistance and there may other loci which also contribute to resistance.
This is where the impact of oligonucleotide arrays come in. With microarrays, I hope to be able to identify candidate genes in the rice materials I am working on that contribute resistance to different rice pathogens. Most especially, BC3F6 lines of the Vandana x Moroberekan intercrosses will be used for multilocation testing for reaction to rice blast. The effectiveness of gene combinations contributing to blast resistance in these intercrosses would be validated in the field. These results will not only be useful for genetic studies but also has practical applications in marker-aided selection of resistant lines in rice breeding.
Just as in the field of human medicine, where the ideal scenario is that doctor works in the lab looking for medicines against diseases and once found crosses the hallway to bring the medicine to the patient, the use of oligonucleotide chips in my research would allow me to identify genes for broad spectrum resistance against a plethora of rice pathogens and validate their efficacy in the field to come up with a resistant variety, which is the ultimate goal of rice research.

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I am on the last leg of my PhD studies. As the days go by, so fast and so many deadlines, the need for self expression becomes adamant. So here I am, putting down my thoughts, my feelings on what is happening in my life.