Professor Dr. Sakol Panyim TRF Senior Research Scholar (Molecular Biology) Year 2000   Biography and Research Summary   Professor Sakol Pantim was born on March 31, 1943 in Angthong Province. He was awarded a Thai government scholarship to study in U.S.A. where he received a bachelor degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 and a dectoral degree in biochemistry from the University of Iowa at Iowa City, On his return to Thailand in 1971 he worked in the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University and became an assistant professor in 1975. He went to Switzerland as a postdoctoral fellow at Friendrich Miescher Institute in 1977. He was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry between 1984-1988 and is currently the director of Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Mahidol University. In 1992 he became a professor of biochemistry. He was awarded Thailand Outstanding Scientist in 1985 and won the first prize in Scientific Invention Award in 1996. He was married to Poonpan Attandana and has three sons.   Dr. Sakol Panyim has published 90 international papers from his scientific interests ranging from structure and function of histones, mosquitolarvicidal genes, growth hormone gene, DNA probes to differentiate mosquito sibling species and DNA technology for the diagnosis of infectious diseases of human and animals, and DNA fingerprinting. He developed an electrophoretic method demonstrating that there were five types of histones in animals and plants. This research finding received over 2,558 science citations. He led a scientific group to successfully clone and sequence the genes from Bacillus thuringiensis which specifically kills mosquito larvae. His group also successfully cloned and sequenced the growth hormone gene from a giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas). The growth hormone was produced in a large quantity in Ecoli and exhibited growth promoting activity in fish. The study on specific repetitive DNA sequences in Anopheles dirus eventually gave DNA probe capable of differentiating A. dirus sibling species. The specific repetitive DNA found in Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax led to the development of a highly sensitive PCR method to diagnose human malaria at the level of 1 parasite per microlitre blood. A study on infectious agents that caused high mortality in Penaeus monodon revealed RNA virus and DNA virus. The information on specific nucleotide sequence of the RNA and DNA viruses led to a highly sensitive detection mrthod of the causative agents.