Baghpat village youth braves all odds to win Young Scientist Award in Japan

MEERUT: The recipient of prestigious Young Scientist Award 2019 Ram Karan’s (age 37) stream of research work is somewhat reflection of his own life -- full of struggle in extreme poverty, indomitable spirit and strong will to negotiate way through uncharted territory only to emerge victorious in the end. A scientist in enzymology, he received this recognition for his current research on extremophiles from Red Sea brine pools.

"Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in extreme environments which for other life forms are unbearable or even lethal. These environments include hydrothermal vents, polar oceans and acidic and alkaline conditions, or in the presence of toxic waste, organic solvents or heavy metals", Karan explains.

Ram Karan received this award at the 15th International Congress on Thermophiles organized this year by Japanese Society of Extremophiles, in Kyushu University School of Medicine at Fukuoka . The organising committee of International Congress on Thermophiles has representatives from five institutions around the world, comprising University of Illinois, National Institute of Standards and Technology (both in The U.S.A.), Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; Kyoto University and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology.

At present, Ram Karan is working as Researh Scientist at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) in Saudi Arabia. According to the official statement released by KAUST, "Karan's research focuses on the biotechnological application of extremophiles and understanding how life is possible under extreme conditions."

Explaining the uniqueness of his research for which he got the award, Ram Karan said, "Can you imagine life at more than 80 degrees Celsius, salt up to 30%? Keep in mind that, on average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of approximately 3.5%. We are working on extremozymes. Those are not only active and stable in hot (up to 80 degrees Celsius) but also in high salt (up to 30%) and organic solvents. Mysterious microbes that thrive in tropical and super-salty brine lakes at the bottom of the Red Sea could yield a treasure trove of new enzymes for industrial applications. It is tough to get access to microbes biological bounty. We are the one who used the first time single-amplified genomes (SAGs) to produce proteins. While using SAG – we don’t need to grow the cell in the laboratory. We collected the water samples from 2,000m below the Red Sea surface. We expressed, purified, and crystallized several enzymes and our analysis revealed characteristics that presumably arose as adaptations to life in the hot and salty sea. In summary, our study provided a roadmap for how to mine the molecular riches of organisms found in extreme environments."

Son of an unlettered mother and a class IV employee father, Karan attained his early education from government primary school in his home village Tyodhi of Baghpat and through sheer hard work attained PhD in Enzymology from IIT Delhi. His research topic was halophiles (salt lover), that involved extraction of enzyme protease from Sambhar Lake in Rajasthan. Halophiles are those organisms that survive in highly salty environment.

After attaining degree, he started venturing on to bigger things in life that also includes a project from NASA to study probability of life on Mars by analysing the mud samples brought from the Red planet.

Elaborating upon his humble background, Ram Karan said, "I come from a place where I was bereft of any professional guidance throughout my early academic career. My mother was illiterate and father was a tubewell operator who cycled every day from Baghpat to Delhi covering more than 80 km. Even my village did not have any school beyond class V so I had to travel to another village to complete my Class XII. I wished to study in a Medical College but could not crack entrance exam due to lack of coaching facilities. I completed graduation from Science from Janata Vedic College in Baghpat and MSc in Physical Chemistry after which I moved to Delhi hoping to find something that could catapult me into the league of achievers."

Head of chemistry department at Janata Vedic College, Prof Shyam Kishore while remembering his student, says, "Ram Karan was exceptional as student of this college. He still is. He background, his environment, his conditions, nothing could deter him from moving ahead, he is a self-manifestation of those extremozymes he researches on that survive and thrive even in the most unfavourable conditions."

In Delhi, Ram Karan came to know of JRF (Junior Research Scholarship) and began working to get it and qualified as well. Later, he got interested in Microbial Chemistry and applied for PhD from IIT Delhi but was rejected as his Masters was not done in Biochemistry. "I returned to Janata Vedic College in Baghpat and did second time MSc. and this time it was from Bio Chemistry. I again applied to IISC Bengaluru and also in IIT Delhi and got selected in both", he says.

Ram Karan makes it a point to come back once in couple of years to motivate village students and even visits schools he studied in. "My eyes always keep looking to those students who have the potential. I am willing to go that extra length because I don't want them to go through those hardships as I did."