Daily Times

A positive attitude is one of the vital components for success in any walk of life. Helen Keller, a renowned American author and political activist, famously said: “keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see a shadow.” Positivity, self-confidence and optimism are imperative to face and overcome challenges of life.

DNA, the molecule of life, exhibits genetic information that is essential for development and growth of living organisms. Francis Crick, upon unravelling the structure of DNA with his co-worker James Watson said famous words, “We have discovered the secret of life.” These two scientists, in the early 1950s at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, unequivocally established the double helix model of DNA structure on the basis of X-ray crystallographic data obtained by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins at King’s College, London. The discovery of DNA structure exerted great impact in various fields which included medicine, food, and agriculture.

The research on DNA dates back to the late 1860s when biochemist Friedrich Miescher attempted to isolate new materials from white blood cells which he collected from the pus-soaked bandages of clinical waste. Miescher was able to isolate new contents from cell nucleus termed as nuclein by him. His work led to a new scientific domain that is eventually serving humanity to improve the quality of life. After this initial discovery of nuclear contents, this research domain was flooded with numerous researchers. The continuity in the urge to gain more insight into the structure and function of DNA paved the way for rapid progress in the area of DNA study.

The emergence of X-ray crystallography set the stage to solve the complex problem of DNA structure elucidation. Dorothy Hodgkin successfully employed X-ray crystallography for structure elucidation of large biological molecules such as penicillin, lysozyme, and vitamin B12. In the loop of DNA structural study, a student of William Bragg, a Nobel laureate and inventor of X-ray technique, was able to get the first X-ray crystal structure of DNA but it could not be interpreted at that time. Later, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin reported best X-ray image of DNA of that time, however, the mystery of exact structure remained unresolved. In the early 1950s, James Watson and Francis Crick had the honour of putting the last of the puzzle to complete the picture of DNA structure. Their work was mainly based on the X-ray crystallographic data of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. Their results were published in top ranked journal “Nature” in 1953. The interesting fact about the progress of the peers of scientists working on structure elucidation of DNA is that the research articles of Wilkins’s group and Watson and Crick were published in the same issue. A few years later in 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded Nobel Prize for DNA structure elucidation. Rosalind Franklin could not achieve this recognition due to her death prior to this award. The consistency of the scientists to benefit from the research of others with positive attitude resulted in the rapid progress in the field.

Optimism, self-confidence and positivity are vital characteristics for moving forward to your ultimate targets is the way to success. Positivity is an important characteristic in any area to move forward to achieve success instead of indulging in criticism without any logical solution.

With the spirit of positivity, if we look at the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan and their services for the last couple of decades, HEC has taken wonderful steps for improvement of higher education in Pakistan. Major milestones that HEC have achieved include degree accreditations, research funding for universities, human resource development by providing scholarships for doctoral and post-doctoral programs (both indigenous and foreign), employing plagiarism detection software to validate research theses at MPhil/PhD students, placement of scholarships holders after their return from abroad and much more. With these steps in place, we can now see that Pakistani universities are gaining rankings in the competitive ranking of universities worldwide. HEC, with its continuous and positive efforts of many years, has now become a credible body at the national level that accredits degrees, provides funds, and promotes universities to improve higher education standards. Every action is bound to face some criticism, and in my humble view, it is imperative for progress if taken positively for the improvement of the system.

On the same lines, a positive attitude of any new government towards the right initiatives of previous government helps support sound and pragmatic projects for services of humanity at the national level. The approach should be to improve, if there are shortcomings, instead of criticising and discarding those. A positive input into any befitting project leads to serve people in a broad spectrum. Altogether, a positive and optimistic approach towards a particular project always helps to move in the right direction for eventual success.

The writer is an assistant professor at International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi. He can be reached at abdul_hameed8@hotmail.com