Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Kornberg Shanghai Speech: I am a critic of the Big Science Project

The scene of the "Future International Big Science" forum.

On October 30th, the "Future International Big Science" forum of the second world's top scientists forum was held in Shanghai, and roger Koenberg, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, first appeared.

Professor Roger Kornberg is a renowned American biochemist and currently a professor of structural biology at Stanford University. He made a series of remarkable achievements in the field of "Molecular Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Gene Transcription", for which he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Roger Kornberg began his speech by saying he was a critic of the Big Science program, not an advocate. He said he had benefited from big science programs and had a reverence for them, but throughout the century, the experience of the life sciences had pointed out a different direction for humanity.

For example, he said, biomedical advances over the past century, such as X-rays, antibiotics, penicillin, noninvasive imaging, genetic engineering, etc., have one thing in common — most of them do not come from big science programs, but scientists have made new scientific discoveries unexpectedly while doing their own research. "These major advances that form the basis of modern biomedicine are not from big scientific projects, but from individual efforts."

Kornberg demonstrated this idea with the example of the molecular screening mechanism proposed by molecular biologist Sydney Brenner and chemist Richard Lerner in 1992.

He refers to the DNA-Coding Compound Library (DEL) method that Brenner and Lerner mentioned in 1992. Specifically, DEL is a technology for synthesizing and screening small molecule compounds on an unprecedented scale, a bridge in medicinal chemistry that bridges the fields of combinatorial chemistry and molecular biology with the aim of accelerating drug discovery processes such as target validation. Kornberg said that the method proposed by Brenner and Lerner has greatly reduced the cost of molecular screening, which is not only very powerful, but also has achieved great success in the industry, and a lot of drugs have been developed.

"It's true that some of the scientific results came out of big science programs, like human genetic engineering, which cost a billion dollars," Roger Kornberg said in his speech, "but it was problematic, and in retrospect, the same discovery can now be made with a tenth of the funding." He also mentioned big science projects on protein structure issues that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

At present, many countries are eager to know, how to achieve more scientific discoveries? But discovery itself cannot be planned. Roger Kornberg believes that we need to support thousands of young researchers to do their own research, and eventually they will make scientific discoveries and improve the current situation of humanity.

Roger Kornberg also talks about how science programs or major spending do help for some significant biomedical infrastructure that individuals can't afford or maintain.

Finally, Roger Kornberg said, I want to call on you to focus on small science.