The Indiana University Graduate and
Professional Student Organization (GPSO) and University Graduate School (UGS)
congratulate our November student of the month, Erkin Kuru. Erkin is part of
the Biochemistry
Interdisciplinary Graduate Program.
His research interests focus on analyzing bacterial cell walls in order to design much
needed antibiotics. Erkin was born and raised in Istanbul,
Turkey. He recalls “I was constantly at the heart of one of the most
sophisticated cities in the world, but I also realized early on, that I needed
to become an experimental biologist, who would combine the analytical thinking
of an engineer with biological sciences. Thus, I went on studying the
biological sciences and bioengineering program at the Sabanci University.
During my time in college, it became clear that I would not be able to fully
contemplate biological systems without a fair intuition about the chemistry of
their macromolecular components.” Erkin’s academic interests always had a
biological component to them, but he found biological systems too complex and
unpredictable. Therefore, he has sought ways to simplify biological systems
in order to increase our understanding and our control on them.
“This 'obsession' about increasing control was probably founded very early on,
when me and my colleagues reinvented and discussed overly
simplified versions of chaos theory and mechanistic determinism on a
philosophical level,” he explains. “Much more recently, I have discovered
that this approach to biology is shared by many great minds, whose vision can
now be classified within the scope of a fairly popular field: synthetic
biology. I think my whole academic interest can perfectly be summed up by
one of the last entries that the great physicist Richard Feynman had
on his black board: ‘What I cannot
create, I do not
understand.’”
When asked about his accomplishments of
which he is most proud, Erkin offered this fascinating mini-lesson in his
field: “When came to IU, I joined to Prof. Michael VanNieuwenhze's organic chemistry group, mostly because Mike
posed a great biological problem for me to solve: Developing universal
chemical tags to label the cell walls of bacteria, namely their
peptidoglycan. Peptidoglycan is an essential megamolecule that is also
specific to bacteria; therefore most of the antibiotics we currently rely on
target the peptidolgycan assembly. However, the resistance of bacteria to these
antibiotics is on the rise and we need to increase our understanding of
peptidoglycan biosynthesis in order to be a few steps ahead of these dangerous
multi-drug resistant bacteria. Unfortunately, until now we had only a limited
set of tools to probe peptidoglycan in vivo. Basically, I have developed the
first non-toxic and universal methods to probe the peptidoglycan synthesis
real-time and in live bacteria. In the process of design, I have looked at
molecular signatures of peptidoglycans,that are common to all
bacterial species and noticed from the literature that some of these molecules
can readily be exchanged by seemingly bizarre but natural
derivatives in diverse bacteria. Recognizing this
inherent tolerance, I have designed a variety of unnatural and
modular derivatives, which allowed us to probe cell walls of virtually all
bacteria without perturbing their growth. In other words, we
have discovered the Achilles' heel of the bacteria! Therefore, this
concept definitely carries the potential to facilitate countless
experiments involving basic peptidoglycan research. On the other hand, since
peptidoglycan biosynthesis is an essential process and is tightly related
to the bacterial growth, we are currently designing new probes that may directly
have diagnostic and/or antimicrobial applications.”
Erkin identifies art as
a key component of his life. “I cannot read, write or do lab work if I
don’t listen to good music, preferably jazz or classical music,” he
reflects. But his chief artistic passion is photographic, a craft he
learned while assisting Nazif Topcuoglu,
a renowned Turkish art photographer, in Istanbul. Erkin finds any excuse
to take pictures, and recently used his talents to photograph his friends in
their Halloween costume in his studio.
Taking
a moment to reflect upon his graduate school experience thus far, Erkin
explains “Graduate school is an amazing place to learn how to cope with
failure! Graduate school, similar to any other ambitious endeavors in
life, is full of failures. And there is no doubt that this is very
depressing. Thus, although considering to give up is sometimes
inevitable, I believe my example tells that persistence and stubbornness about your
project can pay off. The trick is in taking the right attitude in order to keep
yourself constantly motivated.” He also pointed out that “thinking widely
and interdisciplinary was definitely a must for [his] case.”
On that inspirational note, we ask the final, most important question that
faces all graduate students: cake or pie? Erkin responds: “Unless it is
cheesecake, I would definitely choose pie! I usually hate cake,
because I am not a big fan of frosting. There is a lot of sugar and foamy cream
to get though until reaching to the core of a cake. Obviously, cheesecake
is an exception and therefore I love it! Pie is another story. I don’t
think I have ever eaten a real pie until I got to States. Surprisingly, the pie
concept as a desert does not exist in the Turkish cuisine. I love the substance
that its crust gives to a pie. I also like my fruits in a desert!”
