Faculty Research Lecturer’s advice: Whistle a healthy tune

Steven Clarke, professor of biochemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and director of the Molecular Biology Institute, is getting ready to deliver the 107^th Faculty Research Lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 3, one of the highest honors given by the Academic Senate to professors who have made extraordinary achievements in research and can present a lecture of interest to scholars as well as the public. Being chosen to deliver the lecture is a huge honor, Clarke said, and colleagues and family alike have been giving him plenty of advice.

 

“One of my colleagues who did this a few years ago said, ‘Steve, it’s 10 minutes of glory and six months of worrying about how badly you’re going to embarrass yourself,’ ” he said, laughing. “And there’s a certain amount of truth to that, right?”

 

Not that Clarke needs to worry. He’s completely prepared to delve into the subject of his talk, “Aging and Rejuvenation: Chemistry and Biology at Work,” which will focus on the fascinating dichotomy between two crucial disciplines: chemistry and biology.

 

“I’m going to talk about aging as ‘warfare’ between chemistry and biology,” he said. “Chemistry is the ‘bad guy’ that results in spontaneous degradation of molecules that make us up. Biology fights back and tries to build them up again.”

 

What’s amazing, he said, is how long humans can live, despite this constant battle. “Say you’ve got lemon meringue pie. It’s good the first day, not so good the second day, and after a week … and that’s just a pie,” Clarke explained. “Now imagine a machine as complicated as us lasting 80, 90, 100 years. It’s an active fight, because we have this spontaneous degradation that’s always happening. And it’s because of these active biological processes that are basically turning back aging.”

 

It’s fitting that Clarke would refer to the human body as a machine, since he’s had an interest in machines since he was a child. He remembered getting gifts from his parents, such as a bicycle and a camera, and taking them completely apart. Never mind that he could never get them back together again — the lesson he learned was that life is a big challenge. What puts us together that makes us work?

 

In fact, Clarke comes from a truly academic family, several with close ties to UCLA. His father, a chemist at Pfizer, was involved in making penicillin during World War II. His older sister, Barbara Mossberg, is an Emily Dickinson and John Muir scholar and professor at Cal State Monterey Bay; his younger sister, Dr. Lorraine Young, is a professor of medicine and dermatology at UCLA, and her husband, Dr. Stephen Young, is a UCLA professor of medicine. And Clarke’s wife, Cathy, is also a professor of biochemistry at UCLA.

 

“We’re all doing research, so my father would say, ‘We’ve got six doctors in the family, and when I get sick, I still have to go to Kaiser,’ ” Clarke said, laughing.

 

A UCLA faculty member since 1978, Clarke is proud to say that he has had a 43-year relationship with the campus. Starting in 1966, when he was an undergraduate at Pomona College in Claremont, he spent his summers at UCLA working as a lab assistant for Professor Don Lindsley, a brain researcher who happened to be the 1960 Faculty Research Lecturer.

 

Over the years, Clarke has mentored many students of his own, including his 34th Ph.D. student, who graduated last summer. Currently, he has nine students working on their theses in his lab.

 

“I give my students a lot of free reign,” he said. “Sometimes that works out better than other times, but I’m training them to be professionals. I’m training them to run labs. I’m training them to be leaders.”

 

Clarke also derives great joy from teaching undergraduates, whom he occasionally likes to tease. “Students will come in and they’ll look at the stuff and say, ‘Do I have to memorize this?’ And I’m really bad,” he said mischievously. “I’ll say, ‘Oh no, please, I don’t want you spending your time memorizing. No, no, no.’ And they sort of relax in their chair. And then I say, ‘I want you to know it so well, you don’t have to memorize it.’ And then the groans start.”

 

When he delivers the Faculty Research Lecture on Nov. 3, his audience will be a wide-ranging group of colleagues, staff, students, friends and faculty from other disciplines. It’s not an easy task to address such a diverse group, but Clarke is ready for it.

 

“I have a message,” Clarke said, smiling. “You know when you get out of a Broadway show, and you’re whistling the tune from the overture? This is the tune that I want the audience to whistle: that in aging, it’s basically the forces of chemistry that are degrading us, and the forces of biology that are building us up. And the crucial thing is, we can’t stop the chemistry.

 

“How do we enhance those biological reactions that build us back up? How does understanding those processes help us to maintain a health span? That’s the message that I hope will be there.”

 

The 107th Faculty Research Lecture is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 3 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall, and is open to the entire campus community.