Pill-Soon Song is a 2000 ORCA winner.

Song's Work Sheds Light on Living Organisms

Pill-Soon Song, Dow Chemical professor of chemistry, was one of two recipients of universitywide Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Awards this spring. In this final stories in a series featuring systemwide award winners, Song talks with Tom Simons about his research.

Q: You've won many honors within your field of research, photochemistry and photobiology, but the ORCA award is different from most in that it's open to researchers in all the disciplines offered on University of Nebraska campuses. What do you think are the special qualities of your work that earned the award for you?

A: That's a tough question. I'm sure the selection committee can answer this better than I can. But from my perspective, I received the ORCA award, I think, because I have been able to attack one of the fundamentally important problems in understanding the role of light in living organisms, especially plants and single-cell ciliates, particularly with the capable collaborative efforts of my students, postdocs, and coworkers, both at UNL and abroad.

Q: What were the experiences that led you to become a scientist and what drew you into chemistry? Was there ever a time when you considered another field? I ask this because biology seems to be such a big part of what you do. I guess another part of the question is, do you consider yourself to be strictly a chemist?

A: Although I thought about becoming a writer when I was in high school in Korea, my main interest had always been in science, either medicine or biological chemistry. The most important experience in solidifying my decision to study science was internships at industrial research labs in Korea during the summers. I had much fun doing lab experiments at alcohol fermentation, beer brewing and wheat flour company labs during those summer months when I was a high school student and as an undergraduate at Seoul National University. In more recent years, I have been wondering if I should have gone into biology rather than biochemistry or chemistry, but I have no regret for the course I have taken as a student of science on the borderline between chemistry and biology. I consider myself as a chemist with interest in biological systems.

Q: On that subject, did you have any inkling at the start of your career that chemistry and biology would become so closely linked?

A: I can point to two discoveries in the '50s and '60s that illustrated the interfacing of the two sciences and excited my interest. Those were the photochemistry of rhodopsin as the vision pigment as elucidated by George Wald and Toru Yoshizawa and the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide fixation in green plants as discovered by Melvin Calvin and Andrew Benson. I was inspired by these and other works in biological chemistry and became interested in the chemistry of living systems.

Q: What are the aspects of your research that you have found to be the most interesting and challenging?

A: The fact that light, especially visible wavelength light from the sun, exerts such a profound effect on life in general and growth and development of plants in particular.

Q: In your years at Nebraska, are there any results from your research that were particularly gratifying to you personally, that you feel are your major contributions to your field?

A: With my former students Debbie Sommer, Bill Parker and Lilly DeForce, I was able to show how phytochrome acts as a plant's equivalent of the human visual pigment rhodopsin. We used spectroscopic and biochemical tools to elucidate how the light activates the phytochrome protein molecule to trigger the molecular events leading to the control of plant's growth and development. With the help of my students Nengbing Tao, Renke Dai and postdocs Giovanni Checcucci and Elisabetta Bini, we were also able to determine the unique structures of the two light-sensitive ciliate cells for the first time. Professors Michael Gross, David Smith and Rich Shoemaker from UNL and Francesco Lenci from Italy also collaborated with me on this project. Most recently, my collaborator at Kumho Life Science Laboratory in Korea, Giltsu Choi, and I have reported what we consider to be a first discovery of how the phytochrome protein functions through a signal transducing molecule. We reported this finding in the journal Nature last October.

Q: Have there been any results that really surprised you, and if so, how did they surprise you?

A: The most surprising result is the one reported in the Nature paper. The signal transducer protein that mediated the phytochrome-mediated light regulatory process in plants turned out to be an enzyme called NDPK-2, which was totally unexpected. This protein is well known in animals and humans because it acts as a cancer suppressor protein, among several other functions. So it was surprising to find that the similar protein was functioning in plants.

Q: Do you foresee major breakthroughs in phytobiology and phytochemistry research in the next 10 to 20 years that will improve our lives?

A: There is no doubt about that. Already, we are beginning to see major breakthoughs in biotechnology that have major applications and impacts in medicine and agriculture.

Gift Creates First Named Vice Chancellorship, Honors Irv Omtvedt's 25-syear Career

By Robb Crouch, NU Foundation

A gift from University of Nebraska alumni Neal and Leone Harlan of Valley, Neb., creates the first ever named vice chancellorship within the University of Nebraska system while honoring Irv Omtvedt, the retiring vice chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The surprise announcement of the Harlan's gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation was made on June 9 at a retirement celebration honoring Irv Omtvedt's 25-year career at UNL.

The Harlan's gift provides a twofold benefit to the institute by establishing both the Neal and Leone Harlan Vice Chancellorship of IANR and the Irv Omtvedt Innovation Awards program. The next IANR vice chancellor will receive an annual salary stipend as well as flexible funds for presenting Omtvedt Innovation Awards to faculty, staff and students. Grants given may assist individual faculty, faculty teams and students inventing new program delivery or expanding current research, teaching and outreach activities. The awards may also recognize IANR faculty, staff and students for their outstanding work and efforts.

According to UNL Chancellor James Moeser, the Harlan's gift comes at a good time for the University as it now recruits Omtvedt's successor.

"I am personally grateful to Neal and Lee Harlan, great friends of the University of Nebraska and the institute, for their generous and timely gift in honor of Irv Omtvedt's career," Moeser said.

"I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute to Irv - one that will provide the next vice chancellor not only with a salary supplement, and thus enable us to be highly competitive with other institutions for salary, but even more significantly, arm this vice chancellor with flexible funds to support excellence in the Institute. There is nothing so valuable as unrestricted resources to jump start new endeavors or to provide areas of support that would otherwise be unavailable. This will be a critical lever in taking the Institute to a new level of excellence."

Neal and Leone Harlan have been friends of Omtvedt and his wife, Wanda, for more than 10 years and are grateful for the opportunity to honor Irv Omtvedt's dedication to the university.

"Lee and I appreciate being asked to help the university honor Irv Omtvedt," said Neal Harlan. "We believe he is one of the university's rare finds...and has taken IANR to a higher level. He certainly shows great leadership ability by heading up a vast organization and all it entails throughout the state. It takes a real leader to be able to do this while holding other positions in concert with the vice chancellorship."

Irv Omtvedt joined UNL in 1975 as head of the Animal Science Department. In 1982, he was named dean of Agricultural Research and director of the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station before becoming IANR vice chancellor in 1988.

Over the years the Harlans' gifts have benefited the Lied Center for Performing Arts, the Nebraska Leadership Education Action Development (LEAD) Program and the Agricultural Research and Development Center. They also funded two professorships: the Neal E. Harlan Professorship of Agribusiness, and the Judge Harry A. Spencer Professorship of Law, which honors Leone Harlan's father who is a former Nebraska Supreme Court judge and an NU graduate.

"The university provided our family with an education that was and still is exemplary," said Neal Harlan about the reason they support NU. "The IANR named vice chancellorship is another way for us to pay back a little for what the University has done for us."

Neal Harlan grew up in Hickman, Neb., and received a bachelor's degree in agriculture from NU in 1953. Leone Spencer Harlan grew up in Lincoln and received a bachelor's degree in education at NU in 1955 and a master's degree at UNO in 1970. They married in Lincoln in 1957 and have a daughter, Stephanie Harlan, a 1986 UNL graduate.

Leone Harlan was a teacher for 24 years and worked mostly at Omaha public schools. After 20 years with the Scoular Co., Neal Harlan retired in 1989 having served as president and chief executive officer, and he continues to serve on its board of directors.