Get to Know Yury Polikanov
Dr. Yury Polikanov is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and is jointly affiliated with the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy. He shares his professional journey and life experience with us.
Q. What is your research about?
A. Our laboratory research focuses on the structure and functions of the ribosome, a complex macromolecular machine responsible for protein synthesis in all living organisms. Our research provides the basis for the understanding of how different elements of the ribosome function together at the molecular level. We also study the modes of action of ribosome-targeting antibiotics and mechanisms of drug resistance at a structural level. This knowledge is crucial for the development of novel anti-infection compounds that would be effective against drug-resistant pathogens. Recently, we deciphered the molecular mechanisms of the clinically most- significant type of multi-drug resistance used by pathogens against macrolides - one of the most successful classes of antibiotics used in the clinic. By solving the first crystal structure of the drug-resistant ribosome, we have uncovered a principally new molecular mechanism of resistance to macrolide antibiotics.
Q. Why did you choose biology as a profession?
A. My parents are medical doctors who hoped that I would become a doctor, too. Since I was a child, however, I’ve been interested in how things work. Despite being doctors, my parents could not answer simple questions that were of interest to me as a child such as “How does aspirin work?” Of course, they knew what the dosage of aspirin should be and when it should be given to a patient, but that formal knowledge wasn’t interesting to me at all: what I really wanted to know was how it works rather than how to use it.
I fell in love with chemistry, physics, and mathematics in middle school, but my biggest passion was biology because it unites all the other disciplines. An extremely rare phenomenon called “life” exists in the wide universe; it exists on our tiny planet and in ourselves. As a life-form myself, I can’t think of any science more important than the one that uncovers the basics of life: biology! This is why I’ve chosen biology as a profession.
Q. Tell us what you love about science.
A. As an active researcher, I love the freedom of experimentation most of all - you can study whatever is the most interesting to you! Because of that, every day can be different than the previous one. When Mother Nature is your interview subject, being a scientist is like being a journalist. Through an experiment, you ask Mother Nature a question and get an answer, then ask another question and get another answer. Over time, your experiments turn into an exciting dialogue, which, once started, is almost impossible to stop.
Q. What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
A. I learned how to hold and use a soldering iron at the age of five, which was earlier than I learned how to hold a pencil or pen in school, which probably explains why one of my lifetime passions is electronics. I still enjoy occasionally soldering and assembling various circuits from transistors, capacitors, resistors, and diodes to see how they work and even invent ways of improving those circuits. Of course, this childhood passion later transformed into computers and programming, which actually helps me a lot with the scientific research in my lab. My other passion is aviation and astronautics. I like reading books, articles, and watching movies about famous pilots and astronauts, legendary airplanes, and masterpieces of spacecraft. In the end, pilots, astronauts, and scientists have a lot in common - they step into the areas where nobody else has ever been before!