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HHMI BULLETIN A UG ’06 VOL .19 • N O . 0 3 • Howard Hughes Medical Institute Howard HHMI BULLETIN • www.hhmi.org Phototake/ © Gopal Murti HUMAN PARAINFLUENZA VIRUSES ARE A COMMON CAUSE OF RESPIRATORY An Ounce of Prevention INFECTIONS IN YOUNG CHILDREN, BUT CAN CAUSE SERIOUS ILLNESS IN THE ELDERLY AND PEOPLE WITH COMPROMISED IMMUNE SYSTEMS (AS IN THE PATIENT DESCRIBED ON PAGE 16). THE GOOD NEWS IS, THE VIRUS LIVES ONLY A FEW HOURS ON SURFACES AND IS EASILY INACTIVATED WITH SOAP AND WATER. IN THIS ELECTRON MICROGRAPH, A PARAINFLUENZA VIRUS IS MAGNIFIED 51,300 TIMES. NONPROFIT ORG. US POSTAGE PAID 4000 Jones Bridge Road HYATTSVILLE, MD Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815-6789 PERMIT NO. 61 Modern-Day www.hhmi.org Change Service Requested Virus Hunters This disease-fighting duo uses technology and clinical know-how to ID infectious culprits vol. vol. 19 / no. 03 • IN THIS ISSUE Small Seeds/Gerry Rubin Tailored Medicine O b s e r v a t i O n s 20 StillOdigna under feugue construction dolobore temat quis aut autat.press timeUt irit for nulla this feugueissue exer iuremof the Bulletinvel duip, eniamthe tiered nonummy and nullaoreet umglass-filled iniam nissenis landscape nonum building ilit, quat. If you can keep your head… Duiscipon HHMI’s exercipisim new Janelia . Farm (With a nod to Rudyard Kipling) Research Campus in Loudoun County, Virginia, will be It was 1998, and the battle over who would sequence the human genome Gerry is a master. How he keeps his head, I do not know. Against ready for scientists to move was heating up. Craig Venter had vowed that his company, Celera this man I will never play poker. There are mutterings that Gerry is into by late summer. Genomics, would produce the sequence quickly and for profit. As a warm- collaborating with the Devil. “Remember Poland,” says Jim, who up, he announced, he would test his method first on fruit flies, having won recalls World War II. Jim is strong on historical analogies this week: the cooperation of Gerry Rubin, whose Berkeley lab had to that point been “Will you be Chamberlin or Churchill?” he asks Francis. Jim is an the chief sequencer of Drosophila. The tale of the year and a half between Anglophile. announcement and completion of that undertaking was fraught with poli- The world is agog. Of course, it is a pretty small world, but it is tics and intrigue, involving stellar scientific figures such as Jim Watson, of My World, the Golden Run from Cambridge to the east coast and on Double Helix fame, and Francis Collins, who headed the NIH efforts to to Berkeley and Stanford. The e-mails begin to fly. Will Craig patent sequence the human genome. Cambridge University Professor Michael Drosophila? What are these new PE sequencing machines? Do they Ashburner, who was, as he says, “close to the epicenter of the collaboration,” work? Why is Gerry collaborating with him? Will the sequence be chronicles the events of that time in a rollicking new book. public? When will it be done? Will I be scooped? What will this mean I still do not know why Craig wanted to sequence Drosophila—even to the European Drosophila sequencing project? Paranoia. Pure paranoia now, when it is finished. Did he expect to make money from it? Surely not. fueled, as it is so often, by misinformation and lack of information. Gerry Nobody gets rich studying Drosophila (well, that may not be entirely true, had his work cut out to convince the community. but let’s keep it as a first approximation). Or was the reason more mundane, more pragmatic? By starting with an organism with a small genome, perhaps From the book Won For All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced, he could learn to do large-scale shotgun sequencing and assembly. Rather by Michael Ashburner, © 2006 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Illustration: Matthew Dennis like running a 1000-meter race to see whether you can run a marathon. Reprinted here with permission of the publisher. vol. 19 august ’06 no. 03 DEPARTMENTS PRESIDENT’S LETTER 0 3 Sowing Seeds CENTRIFUGE 0 4 Fall Fashion 0 5 A Wild-Angle View 0 6 Dog Head Blues UPFRONT 0 8 The Secret Life of Plants 1 0 The Right Frame 1 2 Stopping a Force of Nature PERSPECTIVES AND OPINIONS 3 8 Cynthia Wolberger 4 0 Rebecca Richards-Kortum 4 2 Q&A CHRONICLE Science Education 4 4 Scientific Publishing 101 4 5 New Awards Help Launch Research Careers 4 6 All in the (Science) Family 4 7 EXROP Students Hand Off the Baton Lab Book 4 8 Protein Boost Bumps Bats Skyward 4 9 Niche Guests 5 0 Dial Down the Stress Ask A Scientist 5 1 Why are teeth the only bones that we lose? Toolbox 5 2 Electrifying Cells Nota Bene 5 4 News of Recent Awards and Other Notable Achievements OBSERVATIONS If You Can Keep Your Head… (With a Nod to Rudyard Kipling) FEATURES 14 20 26 32 Modern-Day Virus Back to the Future Johnny Appleseeds A Better Crystal Ball Hunters of Science Gerald Rubin draws Personalized medicine Aided by microarrays, on the past to shape Sometimes small promises a new level an inspired partnership Janelia Farm’s research seeds—and big dreams— of clarity with treatments could finish the job structure. can take root to solve tailored to one’s genes. started by past pioneers. seemingly intractable But it hinges on development [COVER STORY] problems. of exacting gene-based tests. VISIT THE BULLETIN ONLINE FOR ADDITIONAL CONTENT AND ADDED FEATURES: http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin COVER IMAGE: JOSH COCHRAN editor’s letter president’s letter Sowing Seeds Every few months, a new issue of the HHMI Bulletin goes out to more than 20,000 subscribers, a diverse bunch that shares a common interest in science. You may not know it, but our readers MANY OF US grew UP HEARING THE storY OF JOHNNY Appleseed, include students and teachers, scientists and professors, deans, chancellors, heads of foundations, the mythic New Englander who strode the American wilderness legislators, journalists, retirees, and homemakers. As editor, I hope to engage and inspire each of you through a story, a photograph, a moment in every issue. The assorted perspectives that and sowed apple seed as he went. No one really knows what drove you bring as readers inspire me—and the other editors and designers of the Bulletin—to make the Jonathan Chapman into the Ohio territories in the early days of prose snappier, the art livelier, and the science more comprehensible. We truly relish the process of taking a story from the nut of an idea to a dimensional whole that is informative, visually the 19th century, but he traveled ahead of the advancing settlers, appealing, and a good read. clearing land as he went and planting orchards. When the settlers I know firsthand how much fun science and the people who do it can be—I spent more than 20 years working at the bench in biomedical research labs, in academia and industry. I moved caught up, Chapman sold them the trees on generous terms and into science journalism partly because I grew weary of worn comments about how science is dull the apples they produced sustained many a family. and scientists boring. Nothing, in my experience, could be further from the truth. From learning to clone and sequence genes in Oliver Smithies’ University of Wisconsin lab, in the early 1980s, to Johnny Appleseed’s life of restless cultivation—one that working with Genentech scientists to gain FDA approval of the cancer drug Herceptin—two of combined idealism with a certain business practicality—provides “ Our hope is to inspire in the highlights of my research career—I’ve encountered extraordinary creativity and inventiveness an apt metaphor for the way we at the Howard Hughes Medical in every research lab and science classroom. students a curiosity that Having spent 2 years as assistant editor of the Bulletin before stepping into this new role, I Institute think about our grant-making activities. Of course, we am deeply committed to the mission of “communicating the elegance and significance of science cultivate a different kind of ground and our orchards produce a prompts them to explore a through the lens of HHMI-sponsored research and grants for education.” Telling the stories of the talented, energetic, and dedicated people who are the heart and soul of the Institute has been different crop. Our hope is to inspire in students a curiosity that new world and instill in them the role of the Bulletin since its inception. I intend to carry that legacy forward in new and inventive prompts them to explore a new world and instill in them the intel- ways. If you see something in the magazine that moves you, I hope you’ll let me know. the intellectual and technical lectual and technical tools to be successful. Our expectations for repayment also differ from Jonathan Chapman’s—he received tools to be successful. coins, cast-off clothes, and food; our goal is to sustain students’ interests for a lifetime. THOMAS CECH ” This issue of the HHMI Bulletin profiles several particularly fruitful initiatives at universities and liberal arts colleges that began HHMI TRUSTEES HHMI OFFICERS & SENIOR ADVISORS with seed funding from HHMI. As Peter Bruns, the vice president results. Focus groups of young physician alumni of research training James A. Baker, III, Esq. Thomas R. Cech, Ph.D. / President for grants and special programs, observes, “We want to plant seeds programs run by HHMI revealed that the first few years as a junior Senior Partner / Baker & Botts Craig A.