Martin Henry CONGRATULATIONS, Professor Jackson. The recent appointment of Dr. Yvette Jackson as professor in the Department of Chemistry of the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI), brought me back to an E-mail note from another fairly new chemistry professor, Ishenkumba Kahwa. Chemical and Engineering News, a publication of the American Chemical Society recently ran all of five articles on chemistry at the UWI and has given open access to the articles at their website, http://pubs.acs.org/cen/
science/8223/8223sci1.html. An access fee is usually charged.
The chemistry department has been quite productive over these years, and in many practical ways. Natural products research, with its international biennial conference, has been one of those areas of solid contribution. There are all kinds of practical spin-offs in medicines, agricultural products, environmental management, and commercial products from understanding how nature does her chemistry. "Professor Jackson," the news release said, "has a distinguished record of original work. She has established a very fruitful collaborative research programme with the University of Alabama, from which a number of good quality publications have resulted. She has over 30 publications which have appeared in some of the best journals in the chemistry scholastic business. Professor Jackson has also established an international presence through participation in some 29 symposia and conferences both locally and on the international scene, on many occasions as invited speaker."
MOLECULAR INTERACTION
The lady meddles with molecules. Ishenkumba Kahwa, who now heads the department, is not only doing highly practical work with asbestos as a health hazard, but is doing really fascinating research on complex smart molecules. That has to be another column. "The focus of Yvette Jackson's work has been on how molecules in general interact with each other to produce new ones." For many people molecules are just invisible bits of trouble in school science. But Jackson's molecules could actually deliver some very useful products. Most new products have chemists behind them somewhere. The professor's "current research interests include work on the synthesis and chemistry of rotenoids."
Once we get past the big names, these are substances which can become important commercial insecticides of plant origin. These rotenoids are not only attractive for their potential insecticidal properties as a base for more environmentally-friendly products, but they are showing pharmacological, anti-HIV, and general antiviral and anti-microbial activities. So working chemistry at Hampton and at the UWI then doing research could pay off in a big way. Except that the commercial development of products from basic research tends to get done overseas by big companies and the scientist may be left only with the currency of publication. And women like Professor Yvette Jackson are now dominating the traditionally male field of chemistry in training if not in academic jobs.
One of the articles in Chemical and Engineering News, 'Women in Chemistry', notes that "among undergraduates at the University of the West Indies, the fraction of women majoring in chemistry is remarkable. In 2003, women received 65 per cent of the bachelor's degrees in chemistry awarded by UWI Mona. That same year, 76 per cent and 73 per cent of chemistry B.Sc. degrees went to women at Cave Hill and St. Augustine, respectively. In comparison, women earned 50 per cent of chemistry bachelor's degrees awarded by U.S. universities in 2002.
"Women are also strongly represented in graduate programs in chemistry at UWI," the story continues. "Over the past seven years, women earned 70 per cent of master's degrees and 48 per cent of Ph.D. degrees awarded in chemistry at UWI campuses. At U.S. universities, women earned 46 per cent of master's degrees and 33 per cent of Ph.D.s awarded in 2002. In fact, the preponderance of women at UWI isn't limited to chemistry. Women outnumber men at each of the university's three campuses and in nearly every discipline, save for engineering."
HYPOGLYCIN
Jamaican ackee is now getting into the U.S. market. Thank the chemists. The first chemistry faculty member in the fledgling UWI was Cedric Hassall, a natural products chemist from New Zealand. He began the distinguished tradition of investigating natural products chemistry by studying the ripening of ackee. Hassall found the cause of vomiting sickness from eating unripe ackee to be a toxic chemical, which was named hypoglycin, in the unripe fruit. Hypoglycin causes blood sugar levels to crash rapidly. Hassall found that hypoglycin is broken down by sunlight, causing levels of the toxin to drop as the ackee opens.
Along with the Cedric Halsall ackee story, the articles carried by Chemical and Engineering News reviewed several chemistry research projects running on the three campuses of the UWI. Many of these projects are in natural products. One story notes that, "although the islands of the Caribbean account for less than 0.03 per cent of the world's land mass, more than two per cent of the world's total number of plant and vertebrate species are endemic there. Given the region's rich diversity of flora and fauna, it seems only natural that its chemists would mine these riches for structurally interesting and potentially useful chemicals," as Professor Jackson and several of her mostly male colleagues are doing.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
