HHMI BULLETIN 4000 Jones Bridge Road • Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815-6789 Howard Hughes Medical Institute www.hhmi.org One Lump or Two? in this issue Once again, those fast-growing yeast find a way to turn a The Silicon Marvel long-held theory on its head. This time, it’s about prions, • Prions for Good which aren’t as universally nasty as once suspected. Some may actually help organisms evolve. The yeast colony shown here www.hhmi.org A Kaleidoscopic View contains a protein in its prion form. Because the prion, known as PSI+, is self-replicating and forms fibrous amyloids, the yeast look lumpy and bumpy—strikingly different from normally smooth yeast. Susan Lindquist’s group has found 19 yeast proteins that can switch back and forth between a normal and a prion version. The prions are thought to help the yeast adapt to changing conditions (see “A Silver Lining,” page 22). LIGHT MOVES v ol. 23 Heather True / Lindquist lab /no. 02 O b s e r v a t i O n s 16 Secret Agent MAn Skin cells do more than just cover our bodies. As a neurology resident, Stanley Prusiner saw Creutzfeldt–Jakob agent began to emerge. These data established, for the first time, that Keratinocytes, for example, anchor immune cells disease kill a patient in a matter of months. Researchers knew the rare a particular macromolecule was required for infectivity and that this within the epidermis, move and proliferate during neurodegenerative disease and scrapie, a similar disease in sheep, macromolecule was a protein …. wound healing, and even secrete inhibitory molecules were infectious but not as a result of a typical virus. At the University of California, San Francisco, Prusiner set out to determine the molec- Once the requirement of protein for infectivity was established, as part of the immune response. Elaine Fuchs has ular structure of the elusive infectious agent. Hypotheses about the I thought that it was appropriate to give the infectious pathogen of delved deep into the biology of skin cells, including nature of the agent ranged from DNA viruses to membrane fragments scrapie a provisional name that would distinguish it both from viruses their elaborate cytoskeletal networks that support to proteins. Prusiner published the surprising answer in 1982 and set and viroids. After some contemplation, I suggested the term “prion” movement. In the keratinocyte shown here, the blue- off a firestorm of skepticism. He turned out to be right, which earned derived from proteinaceous and infectious. At that time, I defined stained nucleus is surrounded by microtubules (red) him the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. prions as proteinaceous infectious particles that resist inactivation by crosslinked by the protein ACF7 (yellow), which procedures that modify nucleic acids. I never imagined the irate reac- plays a critical role in cell migration. As reproducible data began to accumulate indicating that scrapie tion of some scientists to the word prion—it was truly remarkable! infectivity could be reduced by procedures that hydrolyze or modify proteins but was resistant to procedures that alter nucleic acids, a From Stanley Prusiner’s Nobel Prize Lecture. ©The Nobel Xiaoyang Wu / Fuchs lab Dan Haskett family of hypotheses about the molecular architecture of the scrapie Foundation 1997 may ’1o vol. 23 · no. o2 16 12 web only content Hear Pat Brown discuss our society’s dependence on animal agriculture. Watch fossil hunter Jason Osborne in action on Maryland’s coast. Read how Dan Goldberg and Alan Cowman, on two different continents, zeroed in on an enzyme critical to the malaria parasite’s infectivity. Join us at www.hhmi.org/bulletin/may2010. 22 28 Features Departments COVER STORY PRESIDENT ’ S L E TTER ISTITN U T E N E WS LIGHT MOVES 03 Biomolecular Crowdsourcing 40 Lummis Elected HHMI Trustee 12 Light is becoming the tool of choice 40 CENTRI F U G E Jibrell Selected as Vice President of for researchers who want to precisely Information Technology 04 For the Long Haul manipulate neurons and other cells. 4 1 HHMI Investigator Sean Carroll 05 Fossil Hunter Named Vice President for AL K A E IDOSCOPIC V I EW 06 She Floats Through the Air 16 Elaine Fuchs brings an eye for the Science Education UONTP F R creative to the many-colored facets of L OA B B O K 08 Scratching the Surface her life and work. 42 Young Again 01 Live Long and Prosper A S I LV ER LINING 43 Lab-Grown Liver PERSPECTIVES A N D O PINIONS 22 Sure, some prions can cause diseases, 44 Going Solo 34 Peering Back in Time but others are turning out to be AS K A S C IENTIST 36 Q&A—If you were to take a year off beneficial. to “change the world,” what would 45 How do scientists learn about plants T H E S I L I C O N M A R VE L you aim to do? that are extinct? 28 The new Janelia computing cluster NT O A B E NE CHRONIC L E puts a premium on expandability S C I E N C E E D U C AT ION 46 News of recent awards and other and speed. 38 The Heart of a Snake notable achievements 39 2010 Gilliam Fellows OBSERVAT IONS Secret Agent Man V I S I T T H E B U L L E T I N O N L I N E FOR ADDITIONAL CONTENT AND ADDED FEATURES: www.hhmi.org/bulletin COVER IMAGE: J E SSICA H AY E A ND C L AR K H S IAO contributors After raising two daughters in Takoma Park, Maryland, ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG (“A Kaleido­ scopic View,” page 16) and her husband pulled up roots in 2002 and moved to Manhattan, where she indulges her love of theatre, art museums, and take­out Thai food. Since that time, (1) she’s written her eighth book (Pandora’s Baby) and become a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, writing about big topics like God, death, anxiety, and whether hunky humanoid robots make the best husbands. (1) Although IVAN AMATO (“A Silver Lining,” page 22) thrives on writing about science and technology, he sometimes laments that, in learning more about the world to do his work, he becomes ever more aware of how much he does not know about the world. He has written hundreds of articles and several books. His latest book, Super Vision: A New View of Nature, is (3) (2) a celebration of the way science imagery makes the invisible visible. (2) A fallen biologist, SARAH GOFORTH (“Scratching the Surface,” page 8) traded the pipette for the pen in 2000. Since then, her work has appeared in The Scientist, Popular Science, and The Dallas Morning News, and online at The Why Files and Discovery.com. As manager of print and electronic publications at HHMI, she now works at the bustling intersection of science and digital media. Sarah lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and two dogs. (3) (4) PETER ROSS (“A Kaleidoscopic View,” page 16) works as a portrait photographer in New York City, making portraits for magazines, websites, and corporations, among others. He recently photographed the possessions of the late author William Burroughs: typewriter, handgun, shoes, quilt. This led him to ponder what personal possessions he would most like to be remem­ bered for: his chainsaw, a collection of Odd Fellows pottery, and the world’s best coffee maker, the Chemex. His current project is photographing the 18 people who now live in apartments and homes where he once lived. (4) HHMI TRUSTEES HHMI OFFICERS James A. Baker, III, Esq. Robert Tjian, Ph.D. / President Senior Partner / Baker Botts LLP Craig A. Alexander / V.P. & General Counsel Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky Peter J. 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