Anwar Nasim

Anwar Nasim is a Pakistani molecular biologist and geneticist whose long career has spanned bench research on the genetics of radiation sensitivity, decades of laboratory leadership, and an even longer engagement with the policy and institutional infrastructure of science in the Muslim world. He is best known to specialists for his early work on radiation-sensitive mutants of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe — a body of work that helped lay the groundwork for the later molecular understanding of how cells detect and repair damage to their DNA — and he is known to a far wider public as a tireless advocate for biotechnology, genetic engineering, and bioethics across Pakistan and the broader developing world. Across more than half a century he moved between the worlds of fundamental discovery and of building the structures that allow discovery to happen at all, becoming one of the recognizable faces of Pakistani science.

He was born on 7 December 1935 in a village near Pasrur, in the Sialkot District of Punjab, then part of British India. He grew up in a region that would soon be transformed by the partition of the subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan, and his schooling carried him through that upheaval. He pursued his early university education at Gordon College in Rawalpindi, completing a bachelor's degree in 1955, and then went on to the University of the Punjab in Lahore, where he earned a master's degree in botany in 1957, distinguishing himself with a Gold Medal for his performance. Botany at that time was a gateway discipline into the emerging science of genetics, and the plant and microbial sciences were where many of the foundational experiments of the new molecular era were being carried out. His talent and ambition carried him abroad for advanced training, and he became part of the international community of geneticists who, in the late 1950s and 1960s, were transforming biology from a descriptive science into a molecular one.

A defining chapter of his scientific formation took place in the United Kingdom. In the early 1960s he worked within a mutagenesis research group in Edinburgh, a city that was then one of the most important centres of genetics in the world. Mutagenesis — the deliberate induction of mutations using chemicals or radiation in order to dissect the function of genes — was a powerful new tool, and the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe was emerging as a superb model organism for such studies because of its simple genetics, rapid growth, and well-defined cell cycle. Nasim immersed himself in this approach and carried it forward when he moved to Canada, where he joined the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario, a major centre for the study of the biological effects of radiation. There he carried out systematic genetic screens to isolate mutants of fission yeast that were abnormally sensitive to radiation. These so-called rad mutants — strains in which a single gene had been altered so that the cell could no longer tolerate doses of radiation that wild-type cells survived — became invaluable experimental tools. Genetic analysis of the large collection of radiation-sensitive mutants assembled in his and other laboratories established that they fell into many distinct non-allelic groups, each corresponding to a different gene involved in coping with radiation damage. This mapping of the genetic landscape of radiation sensitivity was a significant contribution: decades later, the genes first flagged by such screens proved central to understanding the DNA-damage checkpoints — the molecular surveillance systems that halt the cell cycle and trigger repair when DNA is injured — work that would eventually be recognized at the highest levels of biology. Nasim's screens were among the early footings on which that edifice was built.

Over his research career he authored well over one hundred scientific papers in international journals and wrote or edited several books, while also serving on the editorial boards of multiple science publications. His interests broadened from the pure genetics of radiation response toward the applied promise of molecular biology: biotechnology and genetic engineering, fields that by the 1980s were poised to reshape agriculture, medicine, and industry. Recognizing how transformative these tools could be for a developing country, he increasingly devoted himself to bringing them to Pakistan and to building the human and institutional capacity to use them responsibly. He took part in international training efforts, including serving on the teaching faculty of a UNESCO regional training course on gene cloning held in Singapore in 1983, helping to spread the new recombinant-DNA techniques to scientists across Asia.

The later and very public phase of his career was devoted to science policy and institution-building. In August 1996 he was appointed Adviser on Science at COMSTECH, the Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, headquartered in Islamabad — a role that placed him at the centre of efforts to coordinate scientific development across the Muslim world. He became closely associated with the National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (NIBGE) in Faisalabad, serving on its international advisory committee and helping to shape its research agenda. He devoted particular energy to the ethics and safety of the new biology: biosafety, biosecurity, and bioethics became enduring themes of his work, and he helped foster a culture of responsible practice as Pakistan developed its own biotechnology capacity. He was active in biological safety organizations and contributed to international discussions on the governance of high-containment laboratories and the dual-use dilemmas of modern biology.

His contributions earned national recognition at the highest civil levels. He received the Pride of Performance award in molecular genetics in 1995 and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, one of Pakistan's senior civilian honours, in 1999. He was elected a fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences and ultimately served as its president from 2015 to 2017, a position that confirmed his standing as an elder statesman of Pakistani science. Through these roles he became a mentor and an institutional memory for younger generations of researchers, repeatedly arguing that scientific self-reliance, ethical responsibility, and international cooperation must advance together.

The shape of Anwar Nasim's life illustrates a particular and valuable kind of scientific career — one that does not end at the bench. He began as a meticulous experimentalist isolating yeast mutants and mapping the genetics of how living cells survive radiation, contributing pieces to a puzzle whose full picture would only be assembled much later. He then turned outward, recognizing that for science to flourish in a developing nation it needs not only discoveries but laboratories, trained people, ethical frameworks, and institutions that endure. In doing so he helped knit Pakistan into the international biotechnology community and pressed consistently for the responsible use of the powerful new tools of genetic engineering. His legacy is therefore twofold: a body of fundamental genetics research on radiation sensitivity and DNA repair in fission yeast, and a generation of institutions, policies, and scientists in Pakistan and the wider Islamic world that he helped to build, advise, and inspire.