Mayana Zatz is a highly respected scientist, with the discovery of some important genes written into her curriculum. She has won awards both here in Brazil and abroad, and openly declares with all of her might that she loves what she is doing. Further: she considers herself to be extremely lucky to be working on that which she adores. She is also a woman capable of passionately taking up causes in which she believes and fighting, warrior like, for her points of view, as it could be seen in the days that anticipated the voting of the Biosafety Bill in the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia: all of a sudden her beautiful face seemed omnipresent on the television. On the TV Globo national news, on the Sunday night TV program Fantástico, on anchorman Bóris Casoy’s talk show, apparently over the entire Brazilian media, there she was, being interviewed; giving her opinion, serene and strong-minded; defending research with embryonic stem cells, one of the new law’s most polemic points and explaining how in the future this could save thousands even perhaps millions of human lives.

She is full professor at the Biology Institute of the University of São Paulo and  the coordinator of the Human Genome Research Center. Mayana, at the same time that she began her life as a researcher in the 80s, and we have to add, a senior – as at that time she had already been researcher during her undergraduate program, during her master’s, doctorate and post-doctorate degrees –, had also implanted into her work a social characteristic, that of assisting the physically handicapped and their families, which resulted in the creation of the Brazilian Muscular Dystrophy Association (Abdim in the Portuguese acronym).

Very discrete about her private life, it was with economy of words that the Brazilian Mayana Zatz, fifty seven years of age, born Mayana Eden in Israel, of Romanian parents, made reference to her family in this interview: she is recently separated and the mother of two boys. She spoke a little about her routine, which is organized around hours and hours of work, but she includes the habit of daily jogging, which may in part explain her graceful silhouette and elegant figure.

In the pages that follow, it is possible to make more direct contact with a little of the practice and thinking of this fascinating personality from within the realms of the Brazilian scientific scenario that is indeed  Mayana (a fuller version of the interview can be found on the website:  www.revistapesquisa.fapesp.br).

How did you discover your vocation for scientific research?
— It started in my childhood. I thought this notion about scientists, books and plants to be the greatest thing. But I also had a leaning towards medicine. And consequently I remained between medicine and research, but for sure I had to be a scientist. So, then when I went to high school. I fell in love with genetics and decided: This is what I want to do”.

Where were you living at that time?
— I was here. I came to Brazil when I was seven. I was born in Israel, left, went to France and afterwards came to Brazil. By then I could already read and write.

You came directly to São  Paulo?
— It has always been São Paulo.

 You were the taking a science course [one of the kinds of high school courses  of that time; the  other was classics, for those who would dedicate themselves to humanities], studying biology through which you then discovered genetics?
— Clearly we didn’t have molecular biology then, there was nothing of what exists today. It was that idea of blue eye and brown eye, those genetic crossings... but I became interested and when I went to university I directed my energies to this.