06/07/2023
Congratulations to 🧽🧑🔬Joe Anthony Manzano and his co-authors to their recent publication to the Philippine Journal of Science (PJS) about the first records of the culturable microbial assemblages of the freshwater sponge /Spongilla alba/ from Lake Taal! 🏞️💧
Link 🔗 to their paper: http://bitly.ws/KCmH
Hi, I am Joe Anthony H. Manzano, a graduate student (MS Biological Sciences) at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) – Manila, a visiting student-fellow /student-researcher at the UST-Research Center for the Natural and Applied Sciences, specifically in theLaboratory for Organic Reactivity, Discovery, and Synthesis (LORDS) under Dr. Allan Macabeo and Aquatic Biology Laboratory under Dr. Rey Donne Papa. Ever since undergraduate, I have been involved in computational molecular biology and drug discovery studies against several diseases such as infections caused by multidrug-resistant microbes, inflammation, cancer, and even COVID-19 using natural bioresources such as plants, fungi, and aquatic species. For my master’s thesis, I work in the Laboratories for Vaccine Science, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology under the supervision of Fr. Dr. Nicanor Austriaco and in collaboration with LORDS under Dr. Macabeo. My current research areas of interest mostly revolve around cancer biology, aquatic biotechnology(freshwater), and computational bioinformatics-driven drug design.
There are people who inspired and still inspires me to pursue these research areas, and these are successful scientists in their respective fields. But aside from my mentors, what really inspired me to choose my current research topics and endeavors is the need to keep up with the ever-changing world. As we combat diseases associated with worsened outcomes and new maladies detrimental to mankind, our current research endeavors made me realize that the answer to these problems can be found in nature. This adds therefore to the many reasons why we need to conserve our natural resources. And in the kind of research that we do, we always incorporate principles of sustainability in drug design and discovery. So that as we try to discover bioactives in search for new-generation pharmaceutical agents, we do not compromise the existence of such bioresources.
I think the most challenging part is how to improve your work and come up with a good story out of the data. As the world of science progresses, the quality of science that we do must also progress. This is challenging as a graduate student in a third-world country because of lack of funds, facilities, and equipment. However, with passion to logic and critical thinking skills, we may overcome such challenges by finding other means to improve our science and eventually tell a good story out of our data. Even though we are done with a particular aspect of a research, we need to continuously ask how and why – and thus the science never stops. We need to elucidate and propose potential answers. We need to rationalize and defend our findings. In terms of the findings of our recent publications in PJS, three of my research works are published in PJS (2 in 2022, 1 in March 2023). The first two publications in 2022 focused on the discovery of bioactive compounds against tuberculosis and cancer in vitro and in silico where we disclosed the potentials of phytocompounds from native Philippine plants in developing pharmacophores. Meanwhile, the 2023 paper reported the first record of culturable microbial composition of a freshwater sponge species found in Lake Taal. We mentioned that some of the associated microbes were rarely reported in an aquatic environment, and mostly found in terrestrial ecosystems. In all these studies, we had to tell a story that will point out the significance of the present study and the need to improve and continue our works.
Doing research itself is a fulfillment. From the conceptualization to experimentation, data acquisition and interpretation, and even up to the manuscript writing and publication – these are all fulfilling aspects of doing research. As a student of science, I like how ideas keep flowing when we try to conceptualize a study, I also enjoy when we do the actual experiments and we had to trust our skills, and eventually critically digest the data to come up with a logical story. But for me, the most fulfilling part is when you get to publish your work and report it to the scientific community. After the strict process of peer reviewing, an acceptance letter coming from a journal is a proof that what we did is worthy of being read and cited by other scientists. This is the time when all the efforts exerted in the conceptualization up to the manuscript writing are really paid off. Publishing in the Philippine Journal of Science is really a goal for an aspiring scientist like me. And because PJS is an open-access indexed journal, a larger audience can read my work – a big fulfillment to scientists and researchers. In this way, Science truly becomes for everyone, as it should be.
You do science to communicate. You do science to share. Science that is not communicated is not science at all. And so, publishing in PJS is one of the many ways to make sure that your science extends beyond the four corners of a laboratory, that your science is appreciated after three days of fieldwork, and that your science becomes a legacy in the scientific community after months and years of conducting your study.
📸Joe Anthony H. Manzano
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