I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before this guy gets a show on cable. Bryan Fry is a biologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and he spends a lot of his time doing this sort of thing--messing with animals you really really shouldn't mess with. In addition to being telegenic, he rattles off those delicious Australian phrases, like, "No drama, mate." (Translation: No problem.)
While Fry is comfortable milking a king cobra in a jungle, he also has a lab-jockey side, using genomic technology to dredge up vast numbers of new snake venom genes. In tomorrow's issue of the New York Times, I have an article about Fry's latest research. He has offered a rough draft of the history of venoms--a 60 million year tale of gene recruitment and gene duplications and high-speed evolution. Understanding this history is a crucial part of Fry's long-term goal of turning venoms into new drugs--a tradition that has already given rise to billions of dollars of sales each year and many lives saved. That may put him off-limits for IMAX movies, but television seems inevitable.
