第一次教训：勤记笔记

有时候，第一次见面、第一句话、第一次教训，可以记一辈子。

Bruce Tempel（1956-2021）不幸于65岁去世。

2021年疫情期间，我们的导师Lily Jan（叶公杼）邮件告知大家的时候，我不能相信，所以也不敢问去世的原因。

昨天因为给一位低年级研究生讲怎么做学生，用了Bruce的一句话，才上网查，更加惊讶：Bruce居然是阿兹海默/老年痴呆。就在他的纪念网页留言。

Bruce是医生的孩子，普林斯顿大学的博士，UCSF叶/詹实验室的博士后。博士后期间，他是叶/詹实验室三位主要克隆钾离子通道基因（Shaker）的主力博士后之一。他后来长期在西雅图华盛顿大学任教。另外两位是Diane Papazian（后来长期在洛杉矶加州大学任教）、Tom Schwarz（后来任教斯坦福和哈佛）。

1985年，我去旧金山加州大学的第一个研究轮转在Zach Hall的实验室，1986年我进入詹裕农/叶公杼两位老师的实验室，在他们指导下完成博士研究。

在神经生物学，詹/叶实验室是进入分子神经生物学的先驱，他们的博后不仅个个履历金光闪闪（哈佛博士好几位、普林斯顿...），而且人才济济，分子生物学也在全世界前列。

自然，Zach让我去找他们学习。他专门写下Jan lab两位博士后的不同名字：Bruce Tempel、Leslie Timpe。让我这个外国来的浑小子不要搞混了。

Bruce可能是教我怎么做nick translation，同位素标记DNA探针。后来用了可能十几年。

但是，我记得更清楚的是他对我的教训。他显然不满意我徒手听他、不动声色看他怎么做实验。他提醒说：你一定要记笔记。因为同一个事情，没人会教你两次。

呆头呆脑的我，立即记住，记了一辈子：要勤记笔记。

昨天我在实验室给低年级研究生说的就是这个意思。

后来我在Jan lab做研究生，当然接触Bruce更多，但他给的第一句教诲，不仅影响我一生，我也经常提醒学生。

Bruce这么年轻逝于老年痴呆，我正好加入了努力致力于治疗阿兹海默病的研究行列，希望能够有助于目前几千万病人（2050年预计超过一亿病人），让我们都立下超过百岁的目标，让它成为新常规。

英文原文（中文为意译，与英文有差异）：

When Bruce was a postdoc at UCSF in the Jan lab, I was a first year graduate student doing my first rotation in the laboratory of Dr. Zach Hall. Zach sent me to learn some molecular biology in the Jan lab. Molecular biology means cloning genes and was the technique of the that period then. I am trying to remember exactly what I learned from Bruce: it might be nick translation, making radioactive probes for DNA. Not only he showed me how to do it which I used for quite a few years, but he gave one very clear message which I remember for life. He saw that I was not taking notes, and told me: “you should take notes when learning from others. No one will teach you the same thing twice”. It is a simple but important lesson which I try to remind my students when they learn from other students. In fact, I just told one new student yesterday, which is why I searched online for Bruce Tempel, whose name was first written down to me by Zach Hall. I later joined the Jan lab and had more interactions. I also remember we all attending the wedding of Ethan Bier and Kathryn Burton. But the first message and his help stuck in my then young mind. I was very surprised when Lily emailed me about the passing of Bruce and could not believe it. I hope to join the efforts to try to find an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease so tens of millions of patients now (and more than a hundred million expected in 2050) will not pass so young and can live to much older and healthier age: let’s all aim for over a hundred as the new normal.