A
s a boy in Hungary, Zoltan Takacs caught
his fi rst snake at age 4. He captured his fi rst venomous snake at age 14. Aſt er more than 30 years of capturing snakes, he has become an expert on snakes and their venom. Find out more about this dangerous and high-tech work from Zoltan himself.
Science Explorer: Have you ever been bitten?
ZOLTAN: Yes—7, well 6 times. Once I was spat on in the face by a spitting cobra. My fi rst bite, at 16, was from a viper at home. I knew instantly what to do because just the year before, I had had to give my friend the same antivenom shot. T en, we had captured a really big viper in a special bag like a pillowcase. My friend threw the bag over his back and there was a big scream and I saw the bag fl ying. T e snake had bitten through the sack and his T-shirt.
SE: Aſt er you gave your friend the shot, did you catch the viper?
ZOLTAN: Oh, yeah, yeah, we got the snake (laughing). We defi nitely didn’t want to lose the snake!
SE: Why would we want to use such a deadly substance as a medicine?
ZOLTAN: Today, the overall goal is to make new drugs from venoms. Toxins are excellent templates to make drugs because nature has been perfecting them for millions of years. T ey are highly specifi c. T ey target only one or very few critical parts of the body.
SE: Do you only collect venom?
ZOLTAN: I do collect venom, but from snake tissues. T e tissue can be a venom gland or even a sample of blood. T ese tissues contain DNA. DNA is the complete blueprint for making the toxin. Unlike “milked venom,” DNA withstands travel in tropical heat. Once DNA is sequenced, you can use bacteria to make unlimited amounts of the original toxin in a laboratory.
SE: What is the new technology that you are developing that would help create new medicines?
ZOLTAN: We have 20 million toxins in nature. To screen, or test, all those toxins by traditional methods would take forever. My colleagues and I invented “designer toxins.” T is technology allows thousands to millions of toxins to be screened at once to see which one has a desirable eff ect for medicine. Not only can we screen nature’s original
toxins, but we can engineer and screen variations of the toxins. For example, we can fuse three snake toxins to make a new artifi cial toxin. Using this technology, we have created a vast library of toxins. With so many toxins to screen, the chance of fi nding one with medical value is very high.
SE: How have your ideas changed and improved?
ZOLTAN: In science, as we learn new information, our ideas, goals, and methods constantly evolve. But the overall aim stays the same. We want to understand and appreciate nature. We identify problems, raise new questions, and use new tools. We also have failures. Failure is perfectly
normal. It can actually help you, because by understanding the cause of the failure and how it aff ected your work, you can perfect whatever you are working on.
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