Iowa State University


Inside Iowa State
September 8, 2000

NOTE: James Olson died in September of 2000.

Olson gets an 'A' in vitamin research

by Teddi Barron
A is for Olson.

He worked by the side of three Nobel Laureates, served as the "vitamin A guy" on committees that recommend our daily requirements, carried the science of biochemistry to a nation developing new universities and advised NASA on how much vitamin A to pack for a trip to Mars and back.

Oh, yeah. Did we mention that James Olson also developed a test used worldwide to identify vitamin A deficiency, which is a serious problem in developing countries and a leading cause of preventable blindness?

This Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in biochemistry has yet to put the brakes on a career that spans five decades and four continents.

He did, however, slow down long enough last November to return to Thailand for an honorary doctorate from Mahidol University in Bangkok. The school honored Olson for his scientific achievements and for his work there 30 years ago when he was part of a successful Rockefeller Foundation project to develop universities.

"The goal was to set up a state-of-the-art graduate program in the basic medical sciences to train people who could assume positions in new universities," Olson said. "Thailand had only four universities with science programs. The Thai government wisely knew in the mid-1960s that there would be a great demand for science higher education and they invited the Rockefeller Foundation to assist them." Olson was a visiting professor at Mahidol for eight years. "At first, I started out just ordering a lot of equipment, supplies, everything under the sun. Then I recruited colleagues to come. We developed graduate curricula, obtained grants and set up research programs," Olson said. At the time, Olson was a biochemistry professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He joined its faculty in 1956 after conducting research with three Nobel Laureates. At Harvard University, where Olson earned his Ph.D. in 1952, he worked with Christian Anfinsen, who went on to win the 1972 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on ribonuclease. Olson then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the International Center for Chemical Microbiology in Italy with Sir Ernst Chain, the 1945 Nobel Laureate in medicine for his discovery of penicillin (with Sir Alexander Fleming and Lord Howard Walter Florey). Olson returned to Harvard in 1954 as a research associate with Konrad Bloch, who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries concerning cholesterol biosynthesis.

While in Thailand, Olson became interested in international nutrition. "Before, I was a conventional university research scientist. I was interested in mechanisms of things and what specific molecules do," he said. "I'm still interested in that, but in the international realm, I thought I should use basic knowledge in biochemistry and nutrition -- especially about vitamin A -- in a way that was helpful socially."

Vitamin A deficiency is a major public health problem in about 75 countries, affecting more than 250 million children under age 5 and pregnant and lactating women. Vitamin A not only keeps eyes healthy, it plays a vital role in cellular differentiation and the proper functioning of the immune system. Insufficient vitamin A leads to blindness, poor growth and increased susceptibility to infection.

To understand the extent of the problem in a given country, public health workers need precise tests. Unfortunately, simple measurements of blood values of vitamin A aren't accurate because they can be skewed by infection or other conditions. Another approach is to look at the eyes of children. "But that's logistically difficult because you have to look at thousands of children to get any statistical validity. If one child in a village is blind, it could be either an isolated case or an indication of a general, regional problem. If it proves to be a widespread public health problem, the government will want to pay attention to it," Olson said. Olson and his colleagues developed a modified relative dose response test to assess a person's reserve of vitamin A, which is stored in the liver. "You give a little bit of an analog of vitamin A and look at the blood level of retinol. If that level goes up and the analog is present in the blood, it indicates the child has inadequate liver reserves of vitamin A. With a single blood sample you can assess a child's vitamin A status," he said. The World Health Organization recognized Olson's test and it still is used around the world.

Olson's work on the assessment tool began in Thailand and continued at Iowa State. He joined the faculty in 1975 as chair of the department of biochemistry and biophysics, a position he held for 10 years.

A search of the vitamin A research literature reveals Olsons place at the forefront, a position that was secured as early as 1965. While a visiting professor in Japan, Olson and a colleague discovered the enzyme that converts beta-carotene to vitamin A.

"The conversion of carotenoids to vitamin A is nutritionally important because most people in the world get their vitamin A from carotenoids which are the yellow pigments of plants. Scientists had tried to determine how that happened for many years without success," Olson said. "Very often, your experiments don't work out or give trivial results. But when you find something that is really new and interesting, your heart beats stronger. Its one of the high points of life."

Thirty-five years, 400 papers and several high points later, Olson prevails as the vitamin A "go-to guy." In the 1980s, he served on the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) Recommended Dietary Allowance committee and on a similar World Health Organization committee. At one time or another, he has served on nearly every conceivable nutrition-related committee of the NAS, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, World Health Organization, U.S. Agency for International Development, United Nations and nearly every food and health organization on Earth and beyond. Olson serves as a consultant on NASAs Working Group on Vitamin Requirements for Space Travel, a position he has held since 1990.

Today, Olson leads an active research group that continues discovering new knowledge about vitamin A. They're looking at the role that a water-soluble derivative of vitamin A plays in causing cell differentiation and the relationship between vitamin A deficiency and reproductive sterility. They're also developing a new assessment technique for identifying vitamin A deficiency in groups of people and Olson hopes to test it with African children next year.

Of all his contributions and accomplishments, Olson says he's most content with his 26-year participation in the International Vitamin A Consultative Group. "The group has played an important role in reducing the prevalence of nutritional blindness among children," Olson said. "One feels rewarded to have contributed to that worthwhile end."

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