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What Makes a Great Lab? COMMENT 1826 and acquired international renown. It attracted students from all over Europe and earned Liebig a reputation as a ‘chemist breeder’. His lab was an early example of the research and teaching establishments that SOURCE: LMB ARCHIVE LMB SOURCE: made the German universities the envy of many. It began as a single room, with a fire in the middle surrounded by work benches. Liebig’s work on the compositions of chemical substances and their reactions was outstand- ing, and his focus on agricultural, industrial and biological issues gave his research a highly topical flavour. He trained his protégés carefully, espe- cially in qualitative analysis. Students flocked to him, with the result that European chem- istry during the middle of the nineteenth century bore a distinctly Liebigian flavour as his students moved to influential positions elsewhere. The identification of state-of-the- art problems and the training of students to solve them characterize his achievements. Liebig’s initiative was widely adapted in the natural and biomedical sciences throughout Max Perutz, James Watson, John Kendrew and Francis Crick talk to a BBC presenter (centre) about the German university system. their Nobel prizes in 1962. Training was also part of the brief of physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), but he brought his own organizational genius to bear on the ‘physiology factory’ that he masterminded in St Petersburg, Russia, What makes famously studying dogs. He adapted aspects of manufacturing to the production of sci- entific knowledge. Pavlov’s staff were among the first to specialize in different tasks: surgi- a great lab? cal, chemical, dog handling. The dogs were also specialized. Many had permanent gastric William Bynum reflects on the factors that have fistulas; some had oesophageal or pancre- atic ones or other surgical interventions that brought nine Nobel prizes to the UK Laboratory allowed Pavlov to examine physiology in situ. of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Pavlov’s ‘laboratory’ eventually occupied a whole building — already nearer to the mod- ern usage of the word, and a far cry from the hat makes an outstanding training researchers, the innovation and single rooms of most researchers of earlier laboratory? There have been a excitement that surround an emerging sci- times. As science has become more complex number of these special places entific field and, perhaps most centrally, the and cooperative, so the physical structures Wduring the past couple of centuries, but presence of a gifted individual with the per- of laboratories have evolved faster than the none more so than the Laboratory of sonality and vision to make things happen. language we use to describe them. Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, The LMB can thus be seen as a modern The next example reinforces this point: UK, which is celebrating 50 years since it exemplar of a species that goes back to the Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945) and his got its own building and, this week, 50 years early nineteenth century. Previous centres of Fly Room at Columbia University in New since four of its scientists were awarded excellence had differing ambiences, which York. It was more than just a room. Modern Nobel prizes — Max Perutz, John Kendrew, reflected the scientific cultures of their times. experimental genetics was born there, with James Watson and Francis Crick. But all share a few important star qualities. In the fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster) as the Overall, the LMB can claim nine Nobel search of these, here I briefly examine three of prize experimental subject. The fly’s rapid prizes for 13 staff scientists during its illus- the LMB’s ancestors and its parent laboratory. breeding time and four large chromosomes trious history, plus another eight for those made it ideal for examining how chromo- who trained or worked there temporarily. As LABORATORY LIFE somal events during meiosis and mitosis a unit within the Cavendish Laboratory at Before the nineteenth century, most labora- relate to the structural features of the adult. the University of Cambridge, the LMB had tories were places in which single individuals A chance finding of a fly with a white eye — a distinguished pre-history. Few would have worked, sometimes aided by an assistant or instead of the usual red — led Morgan to the dared to predict that its independent exist- two. Chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94), importance of the sex chromosome. ence would be so successful and productive. with his wife at his side, was typical. Wives Morgan was a gifted scientist who sur- Seen historically, however, it shares charac- and servants often helped. Justus von Liebig rounded himself with equally gifted students teristics with other outstanding laboratories. (1803–73) changed this pattern definitively. and postdoctoral researchers, including These include new methods of producing Liebig’s chemistry laboratory at the Uni- Alfred Sturtevant, Calvin Bridges and scientific knowledge, novel approaches to versity of Giessen in Germany opened in Hermann J. Muller. Although Morgan was a 4 OCTOBER 2012 | VOL 490 | NATURE | 31 © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT patrician from the US South, he ran his lab on important was Max Perutz (1914–2002), money was found. The present building, in egalitarian lines, with the consequence that whose style and personality shaped the LMB. Hills Road, Cambridge, expanded on more historians still debate the relative contribu- Perutz came to England in 1936, hoping to than one occasion and, still growing, was tions of the different parties. Morgan won work with Frederick Gowland Hopkins, the opened by Queen Elizabeth II in May 1962. a Nobel prize by himself in 1933, although pioneer Cambridge biochemist. A meeting There were then about 25 staff members he divided the money with Sturtevant and with the X-ray crystallographer J. D. Bernal, and the same number of visiting workers. In Bridges, to help to educate their children. then still at the Cavendish, convinced the October, there was a party to celebrate the Only Muller (who won his own Nobel in young Perutz that X-rays could provide the Nobel prizes of Perutz and Kendrew in chem- 1946 for his work on the effects of radiation tools to solve the molecular structures of istry, and Watson and Crick (with Maurice on mutation rates) suggested seriously that proteins. It took Perutz a further year to get Wilkins) in physiology or medicine. Morgan sometimes exploited his students. horse haemoglobin crystals that were suit- Most believed that in the free interchange and able for analysis using X-ray diffraction tech- BRIGHT BEGINNINGS mutual devotion to uncovering the genetics of niques. Because of the Second World War, it The party in 1962 was just the beginning. the fruitfly was a formula that worked. was seven more years before he could return Over the past half-century the LMB has been Liebig, Pavlov and Morgan each cre- to this molecule, his life’s work. Even though at the centre of molecular biology, the dis- ated something special. Their labs achieved he had lived in England for several years cipline at the heart of the life sciences. New international prominence, attracted talented before the outbreak of war, he was treated groups in developmental biology, immunol- scientists and bred further success. Each lab as an enemy alien and incarcerated for nine ogy, cell biology and neurobiology attest to bore the stamp of the founder’s ambitions and months during 1940, in Britain and Canada. the expansion of the field. The growth has personality, and this relationship between He spent the rest of the war back in Britain often been opportunistic, clustered around the boss and the establishment stands out. designing aircraft carriers. individuals such as Sydney Brenner, César Morgan’s culture of egalitarianism provided Encouraged by Lawrence Bragg, then Milstein, Aaron Klug and Michel Goedert. a model for many successful modern labora- director of the Cavendish, Perutz returned The simpler rules of only a generation ago tories, not least the LMB. to studying haemoglobin, joined by John (the original procedures for producing Kendrew (1917–97). The beginnings of the mono clonal antibodies were not patented, LAB SPECIATION LMB date from 1947, when the UK Medical for instance) have given way to the contem- A kind of speciation can sometimes occur Research Council (MRC) began supporting porary competitive world of biotechnology. with laboratories. What is now the LMB the work of Perutz and Kendrew. The origi- As the laboratory has grown, its admin- began life ensconced in the Cavendish Labo- nal name of their group was the MRC Unit istrative structure has inevitably become ratory, the centre of physics at the University for Research on the Molecular Structure of more complex. Until Perutz retired in 1979, of Cambridge and, by any reckoning, also Biological Systems. Perutz described himself it had no director. Perutz didn’t want to be among the most successful modern labs. then as a chemist working in a physics labora- one, and it meant he could retain his lab The Cavendish opened in 1874. Its first tory on a biological problem: a fairly accurate space after retirement. Instead, the lab had director, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79), summary of the inputs into the field dubbed a loose management committee, which met was arguably the most important physicist ‘molecular biology’ in 1938 by the Rockefeller occasionally and saw its main job as attract- between Newton and Einstein. A genial man Foundation administrator Warren Weaver. ing outstanding talent to the lab. Perutz kept blessed with a fertile mind and remarkable Perutz and Kendrew pursued a promis- the bureaucratic structures of the laboratory ingenuity, Maxwell contributed to many ing avenue of molecular biological research, minimalist, and until 1973 a single admin- problems in physics, and he completed the but haemoglobin is such a complex model istrator, Audrey Martin (and her dog Slip- work on electromagnetism begun by Hans that they soon added the simpler myoglo- pers), looked after things.
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