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Professor Pamela Rickard was interviewed in 2001 for the Interviews with Australian scientists series. By viewing the interviews in this series, or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge.
The following summary of Rickard's career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers notes. The extract covers some of the biotechnology projects she was involved in during her time at the University of New South Wales. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.
Pamela Rickard was born in 1928 in Sydney. After completing her intermediate certificate at high school, she spent five years working in the library of the Daily Telegraph newspaper and another five years working as a legal secretary before deciding to attend university.
Rickard was awarded a mature-age scholarship to the University of Sydney and received her BSc in 1957, majoring in biochemistry and microbiology. Soon after graduation she took up a teaching fellowship in biochemistry at the New South Wales University of Technology, now called the University of New South Wales. The position also enabled her to receive an MSc in 1961 from that institution. Her thesis research concerned the iron-containing pigments involved in fungal respiration.
Rickard studied the biosynthesis of porphyrins at University College Hospital Medical School, University of London and received her PhD in 1964.
In 1964 Rickard returned to the University of New South Wales and spent her working life there. She was initially a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Biological Sciences before being appointed to a lectureship in biochemistry in 1965. In 1981 she was appointed foundation chair of biotechnology and served as head of the school until her retirement in 1988 when she was awarded emeritus professor status. While at the university her research concentrated on the fields of yeast biochemistry and physiology, and enzyme technology. Her research has led to a better understanding and use of enzymes and micro-organisms by industry.
Rickard was also very involved in teaching, including undergraduate, postgraduate and radio courses. In 1978 and 1986 she was one of several scientists invited by the Chinese government to give a series of lectures and workshops on biotechnology.
In retirement Rickard wrote a short history of the University of New South Wales’ School of Biotechnology and became a foundation member of the Alumni Associates of the university.
What about your research on enzyme technology?
That came later, in the '70s. It started with a study of the use of enzymes in enhancing juice extraction from grapes, especially non-traditional wine-grapes. There was a glut of sultana grapes at the time, and one idea was to use them for production of cask wine, in particular. Because they don't give up their juice as readily as the traditional varieties, the industry was looking to enzymes which break down the pectin in the grape so that the juice would be more readily released. I did a survey of a range of commercial enzyme preparations, with a view to determining which were the most efficient at releasing the juice. Lindeman's financed these studies and provided all the grape samples from their vineyards. And one of my students continued this work after I retired.
The next project I became interested in was the use of enzymes to break down ligno-cellulosic waste, the fibrous waste from certain industries such as the sugarcane industry. Because of the oil crisis in the early '70s (we've had several more since – they come and go) some people suggested running cars on ethanol or a blend of ethanol and the precious petroleum. It was realised that if we could break the ligno-cellulosic waste down to its component sugars, they could be fermented to alcohol, which in turn could be used as a petrol extender. Noel Dunn and Peter Gray had already started this work, and I joined them. We were supported by NERDDC, the National Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Council.
What other projects did you work on?
One small project was very interesting: applying enzymes in the process of breaking down animal waste to produce gelatin. By getting the conditions just right with this enzymic breakdown we were able to produce high-quality gelatin that can be used to encapsulate capsules in the pharmaceutical industry. This was work-in-confidence with the gelatin industry so it wasn't published, but it was one of the research staff who did the work under my supervision. He got his MSc Biotech, and the company got its process optimised.
Also, by this stage Professor Ralph was interested in biological transformations that were applicable to the mining industry. I did some work with him, and about half a dozen papers were published out of that.
Let's return to your project on the use of enzymes to break down ligno-cellulosic waste. I think there are two phases in the process. Did you work on both phases?
Yes. The two phases are the digestion of the ligno-cellulose to its components, and then taking the sugars released and fermenting them to alcohol. The total cellulose consists of 60 per cent simple cellulose and 40 per cent hemicellulose. The hemicellulose is a much more recalcitrant polymer to break down than the simple cellulose, and moreover not as much work had been done on it. My special role was to take over the study of the hemicellulosic fraction of the cellulosic waste – first its digestion and then the fermentation of its sugars to alcohol. This was rather challenging, because cellulose simply digests to glucose but hemicellulose produces other sugars that are not as easily fermented.
Tell me about the digestion phase.
Noel Dunn, who is a genetic engineer, had manipulated a bacterial strain to digest the cellulosic fraction of the total cellulose. Taking his mutant strain I found it was active towards the hemicellulosic fraction – it behaved the same way towards hemicellulose as it did towards cellulose in being more active than its parent strain. Then I was able to optimise the conditions for maximum digestion of the hemicellulosic fraction.
And the fermentation phase?
I worked on that in tandem with the digestion phase. Not very much was known about the fermentation to alcohol of the sugars that are released from hemicellulose except that it was more difficult to ferment them than to ferment glucose. I attacked this part of the problem by screening environments rich in cellulosic waste materials, and from those environments I isolated Candida tropicalis, a strain of yeast which was active in fermenting these sugars. The interesting feature was that it only fermented them in tandem with fermenting glucose, and it was even more interesting that the ideal mixture of glucose and these other sugars was the same as occurs in nature in the total cellulose. This might seem obvious, but everyone had been looking at either the fermentation of the glucose or the fermentation of the non-glucose. No-one had mixed the two together and found that the best situation was to ferment them together.
I should say that by the time we had done this work, the panic was over and it wasn't taken up industrially. But only this month, 20-odd years later, there was an announcement in the press that the federal government was putting $8 million into development of a process for blending petroleum with 10 per cent alcohol produced from waste biomass!
Would it be true to say that your research contributions led to better understanding and use of enzymes and of micro-organisms, especially yeast, by industry?
Oh yes. I didn't do it single-handedly, but I did write a fundamental review as early as 1974 on the use of enzyme technology in industry. I was a great believer in teamwork, and I collaborated with people in my own department as well as other departments and schools at the university, particularly Chemical Engineering but also Chemistry and Physics to some extent.
So you would have had a number of PhD students working under you?
Yes indeed. It was, of course, the PhD and other research students, and the support staff – some of them in the school, some of them supported by grants – who did all the hands-on work.
The grants, by the way, came from industry, from the Australian Research Grants Committee (ARGC), and from NERDDC. There was some money from CSIRO, too.
Would you say your work was always in applied science, or did you carry out pure research?
The early days were pure research, knowledge for knowledge's sake, and very much encouraged. The yeast work was all fundamental research, really – just understanding how yeasts' metabolic mechanisms work and particularly how they are controlled. But throughout the '70s when I started the enzyme work, that was always with a mission. It was part of a general shift in science to emphasise outcomes.
Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.
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