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Robin Monro
Robin Monro is Director of the Yoga Biomedical Trust. He is a research scientist and yoga practitioner.
The Yoga Biomedical Trust’s research programme is directed by Robin, a Cambridge-trained biochemist, who worked at the cutting edge of research into the mechanism of protein biosynthesis in the 1960s.
As a post-doc at the Rockefeller University, New York (in Fritz Lipmann’s laboratory), he discovered the supernatant-ribosome-linked GTPase and resolved this from another soluble protein factor (*).
As staff member at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (in Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner’s Laboratory) and the Instituto Biologia Celular in Madrid (in David Vazquez’s Laboratory), together with several other co-workers, he discovered and characterised the catalytic centre on the larger ribosomal subunit, at which the peptide bond is formed in protein synthesis. He developed a model assay system for this reaction, dependent on the presence of ethanol, which years later led to the discovery that the catalytic centre is composed of RNA, not protein (*). This remarkable finding has provided the key to what was probably one of the most crucial steps in the origination of life on Earth (the establishment of the nucleic acid/protein system, upon with the heredity and evolution of all organisms is based).
In 1969 he left research in molecular biology in order to dedicate the second half of his career to philosophical and ethical problems associated with science. After spending a year studying history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, he joined Maurice Wilkins in the Department of Biophysics at King’s College London, and spent several years developing a course for science undergraduates on the Social Impact of the Biosciences. This gave him the time to develop his interests. He became interested in Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms, and the way in which the dominant theories in science, at any one time, tend to exclude other forms of knowledge and experience. This seemed very apposite in relation to the way in which molecular and cell biology were coming to dominate medicine.
In 1980 he decided to go in for research into forms of medicine which were largely unrecognised by modern medicine but which were in his own experience effective. After carrying out a survey of complementary medicine (*) (it was this survey that introduced the term ‘complementary medicine’), he focused specifically on yoga therapy, and founded the Yoga Biomedical Trust.
source: www.yogatherapy.org
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Birthlight Trust Launch Reception Monday 10 July 6.00 - 8.00pm more |
