The fact that Dexter Holland has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Southern California is often mentioned in profiles of The Offspring's frontman. But rarely do fans of the Orange County punk veterans get to hear Holland - or Dr. Holland, as he never asks to be called - talk about the specifics of his academic work, and the reasons for his interest in this particular field.
A new interview with The Offspring's vocalist/guitarist in Men's Health rectifies this. For when writer Ryan D'Agostino asks the 58-year-old musician why he elected to focus upon HIV in his studies - work which led to a dissertation titled Discovery of Mature MicroRNA Sequences Within the Protein-Coding Regions of Global HIV-1 Genomes: Predictions of Novel Mechanisms for Viral Infection and Pathogenicity - Holland sounds positively delighted to share his enthusiasm for the subject.
“I know this sounds funny to say, but I think viruses are cool,” Holland explains. “They’re cool because they’re so gnarly. They go in and they take over your cell, and they tell the machinery to stop making cellular things and start building viruses, so all the things that would normally be making your mitochondria, or your cell membrane, those parts now get taken over and turned into hundreds of viruses—little robots!—and when the virus has finally used up all the stuff in your cell, the last instruction is: Blow the cell up! And the viruses go out, and it’s just evil! It’s like Darth Vader stuff, right?”
Holland semi-apologies for his enthusiasm on the subject - “I don’t mean to get a kick out of it, because it’s obviously bad for you” - but goes on to call the work “fascinating” , and explains why it's so useful and important.
“The more people learn about it, they can start tweaking the machinery and say, ‘Well, if we can just block that little step, then the viruses get stuck and no more viruses get made'. So that’s why we spend so much time going into all the detail of all the tiny steps that go into making a new virus out of an old one, and then they try to figure out how to fuck with it.”
Now for the science lesson. Listen up.
“I don’t want to make it too long a story,” Holland says, “but what HIV does is, it gets into your cell and then it has its own genetic material, which is RNA - we have DNA. It converts its RNA into DNA and then it gets into your nucleus, and it inserts itself into your DNA - and then it just goes silent... And your body can’t detect it. It just sees that it’s DNA - it doesn’t know that it’s a virus. So this thing fucking goes into your cell, takes off its cloak, converts to DNA, and hides in your DNA for sometimes years. And I was just like, that’s fucking gnarly!”
Fascinating stuff indeed.
For those more interested in Dexter Holland's contributions to the science of punk rock, The Offspring's new album, Supercharged, is out today, October 11.
