Gautam is an avid ice hockey player and also enjoys playing the violin, guitar and drums. Someday he would like to become a cardiac surgeon, because "more than 40 percent of Americans die from cardiovascular disease; as a cardiac surgeon, I will help people live healthier lives." Gautam's dad is his personal science hero: "I have been visiting his lab since I was very young."
While watching a television program on marine organisms that glow, Gautam wondered whether other organisms would also glow if they had a similar "glow-gene." He developed an experiment to determine whether a glow-gene transferred from jellyfish to E. coli would make the E. coli glow, which he hypothesized would occur.
Gautam identified the protein that makes jellyfish glow, called the "green fluorescent protein" (gfp). Working in his father's laboratory, he then cloned the gfp on a plasmid DNA that consisted of an ampicillin antibiotic-resistant gene and added the cloning reaction to the E. coli cells. He then used the "heat-shock" method—a sudden change of temperature during which the DNA enters the cells. He confirmed the presence of the cloned gfp gene in the E. coli cells and concluded that it is possible to transfer the gene. Gautam believes this may have practical applications in determining whether a bacterium is dead or alive, or in tracking the movements of living organisms and their genetic material in nature.
