{"id":4863,"date":"2017-12-19T07:19:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T07:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/?p=4863"},"modified":"2018-01-29T09:09:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T09:09:40","slug":"indias-dna-fingerprinting-hero-from-the-eyes-of-a-life-long-mentee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2017\/12\/indias-dna-fingerprinting-hero-from-the-eyes-of-a-life-long-mentee.html","title":{"rendered":"India’s DNA fingerprinting hero through the eyes of a life-long mentee"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been over a week that Lalji Singh, widely regarded as the father of DNA fingerprinting in India, and a former director of Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) passed away<\/a> (on 10 December 2017). <\/em><\/p>\n

Tributes have been pouring in from around the world for the affable geneticist who could ‘light up a room with his smile’.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, one of his mentees and long time associates Kumarasamy Thangaraj<\/strong> pays a personal tribute to the man who was also known for his ‘English weather-like anger’ and\u00a0was always true\u00a0to his word,\u00a0except once….<\/em><\/h2>\n
\"Dr_Lalji_Singh\"<\/a>

Lalji Singh (1947-2017)<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s very difficult to accept that Dr. Lalji Singh, who was always full of life and\u00a0infected so many people around him with his exuberance, is not\u00a0among us today.<\/p>\n

I met Dr. Singh for the first time in Chennai in 1991 when he visited the Department of Genetics of the University of Madras to conduct the Ph. D viva of one of my seniors. I was a Ph. D student at that time and my supervisor Prof. P. M. Gopinath\u00a0deputed me at the airport to\u00a0receive Dr. Lalji Singh. I never imagined that this meeting would be the beginning of an immersive, life-long mentoring that was to shape my entire scientific career.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0couple years later I joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in October 1993 as a junior scientist. CCMB Director Prof. D. Balasubramanian allowed me a generous interaction with group leaders to identify the lab I wanted to join. I met Dr. Lalji Singh, he offered me coffee, gave me an overview of CCMB, and discussed the project I would be expected to carry out in his lab. I liked the project as it was in human genetics, very similar to my Ph.D work. I readily agreed to begin my scientific journey with Dr. Singh, an association that continued till a few hours before his demise.<\/p>\n

Dr. Singh made sure everything in CCMB ran smoothly, not\u00a0just the science but also the supporting facility and administration. One morning in 1995, when most of us were working in the lab, he noticed\u00a0a sink blocked with some gel causing problems for all of us. He walked up to the sink, put his hand in and removed the gel without waiting for anyone to come and clean. Everyone in the lab was stunned.\u00a0We had learnt a\u00a0great lesson in self-drive.<\/p>\n

Many people\u00a0thought\u00a0he got\u00a0angry very quickly. But not many knew that his anger was very short-lived and he never nursed grudges. In 1994, he organised an international conference on DNA fingerprinting and wanted to\u00a0invite Prof. Ed Southern\u00a0 of the University of Oxford. Prof. Southern’s secretary picked up his call\u00a0but was somehow unable to connect the two\u00a0\u2014 the invitation could not go through. Dr. Singh was infuriated. One\u00a0year later, we established a collaborative research programme with Prof. Southern\u2019s lab.\u00a0 Dr. Singh sent me to Oxford to initiate the human diversity programme with Prof. Southern\u2019s colleague Dr. Chris Tyler-Smith. When I met Prof. Southern\u2019s secretary there, she recollected how angry Dr. Singh had got during that phone conversation. I told her she should forget this incidence as Dr. Singh\u2019s anger was like the English weather \u2014 it never stayed for long.\u00a0Back in Hyderabad, when I shared this incident with Dr.Singh, he had a hearty laugh.<\/p>\n

If he couldn’t give something 100%, he wouldn’t do it. In March 2009, we jointly established the Society for Mitochondrial Research and Medicine<\/a> (SMRM) along with Prof. Keshav Singh of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. The idea was to promote mitochondrial research and bridge the gap between basic research and the clinics. Dr. Singh was the founder president\u00a0and presided over\u00a0two annual meetings. When he became the Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), I send him a mail regarding SMRM’s next annual meeting. He called me\u00a0to convey it would be difficult for him to devote much time to SMRM and suggested we elect a new President instead.<\/p>\n

He initiated several innovative programmes at CCMB. One such symbiotic programme invites students from universities and colleges with scant research facilities to\u00a0make\u00a0dissertations in human diversity at CCMB. The students get an opportunity to\u00a0conduct research on human population samples which they bring from remote places, and CCMB gets to build a robust DNA bank, a great resource for population and medical genetic research.\u00a0Dr. Singh’s mentorship and easy prodding has helped many, incuding me, to excel\u00a0in the field of human genetics and has influenced several generations of scientists.<\/p>\n

My journey with Dr. Singh was not restricted to the lab \u2014 it took me to the remote islands of Andaman and Nicobar and the dense forests of Chhattisgarh, where we collected the most precious samples, helping us reach very big scientific conclusions.<\/p>\n

Though Dr. Singh always stood by his words, the one occasion he could not do so was on the afternoon of 10\u00a0December 2017. He told me on phone, \u201cI am coming to Hyderabad\u201d, but end came before he could\u00a0leave Varanasi. This last conversation, which I was so fortunate to have with him, will continue to ring in my ears\u00a0for a long, long time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Related links:<\/p>\n

India’s DNA fingerprinting pioneer Lalji Singh passes away<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been over a week that Lalji Singh, widely regarded as the father of DNA fingerprinting in India, and a former director of Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) passed away (on 10 December 2017).  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":4867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,123],"tags":[457915,457913],"class_list":["post-4863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genetics","category-obituary","tag-dna-fingerprinting","tag-lalji-singh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}