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A researcher that rocks

Johan Olsen, a postdoctoral student, researches X-ray crystallography. He is also the lead singer in one of Denmark’s most popular rock bands, Magtens Korridorer. A science nerd with a Mohawk may sound like an impossible mix. Nevertheless, he is living proof that the combination can work.

Johan Olsen can still remember the first time he saw his grade-school biology teacher draw a DNA molecule on the board.

“I can still see the room and how the light hit the board while he drew a double spiral. It was such a wild experience, and he wasn’t a very talented teacher,” recalls Olsen.

Seeing him in his Mohawk and hooded sweatshirt, it is hard to imagine this punk kid becoming ecstatic about the behaviour of a molecule. But he is a real science nerd. This is confirmed by his colleague who once asked Olsen to autograph a CD and received a drawing of a serotonin molecule to boot.

“Serotonin is what puts us in a good mood, and it’s a typically nerdy thing to know its formula,” says the colleague, adding that no one else in the department could remember the formula.

Cool molecules

That is how Olsen is. After being introduced to the DNA molecule, Johan Olsen began spending time at the local library reading Scientific American. And after upper-secondary school, he decided to study biology at the University of Copenhagen.

“I wanted to work with molecules and genes, but thought it was important to understand biological systems at the macroscopic level first. Early in my studies I read a book by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi. He started out wanting to understand what life is and ended up looking at electron transfers in photosystems. In his book, he wrote that even though he had gone into great detail, he still didn’t understand it,” explains Olsen enthusiastically.

“That’s how it is with the molecular structures I work with. You can try to describe the molecule, but you can’t understand it. It exists in another reality than we do. It’s fascinating to observe something, you actually can’t see. You know, your eye is made of atoms. But you can’t focus on an atom. That’s why we purify proteins so that they crystallise and then shoot Xrays into them. That produces some spots and then you can see the atomic structure of the molecules.”

From Excel to punk

Olsen got his PhD in X-ray crystallography, before landing his current position at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Physiology. At one point, he was also unemployed for a year, because he had realised that he wanted to work with music more and was only interested in a part-time position as a researcher. Because “it’s healthy for the soul to do something that doesn’t take place in Excel” – not because the molecules have lost their power of attraction.

“I am currently working on a project with a protein called 16K, and we are making new discoveries practically every day. Experiments have been carried out with mice that are heavily infected with tumours, but injecting them with 16K halts the growth of the tumours. It is an extremely potent tumourinhibiting hormone, and we want to find out why and how exactly it works, so that maybe it will be possible to develop it and use it as a drug in cancer treatment.

Not strange at all

Even though Olsen is standing with each foot in very different worlds, he does not consider his life divided. And he does not find the combination strange.

“I think that the need to be dressed in a specific uniform as an academic is no longer as strong. And when I say uniform, I mean both the tweed jacket, and how you communicate your personality. Over the last 13 years, I have regularly attended crystallography conferences, and in that time I have seen a change. I feel like the same person, when I’m onstage and when I’m at the Institute. And I always look forward both to coming here in the morning and to riding in the tour bus with the band.”