Biologists are defined by both their field of investigation and where
they work. When I was a tenured university professor in the pathology department
of a medical school, my colleagues seemed to understand what I did for a living.
Now that I work at a national laboratory, I am more likely to be greeted with blank
stares. The questions that I do get, such as whether I need to write research
grants (I do) or whether I work on the energy problem (I don't), indicate a
pervasive lack of understanding of the nature of national labs and their
important roles in biological research.
Most people do know that the national laboratory system was established
after World War II as an outgrowth of the Manhattan project to build the first
atomic bomb. Biology was central to the original mission of nuclear energy
research because of concerns about the health effects of radiation.
I grew up in Tennessee next to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and
was fascinated with the technology I saw during high school field trips. When I
graduated from college in the mid-1970s, ORNL was my top choice for graduate
work. It was one of the largest biology laboratories in the world at the time, with
programs ranging from mouse genetics to protein biochemistry. ORNL scientists
were developing technologies for freezing embryos, visualizing gene
transcription, and sequencing nucleic acids. I studied amphibian oogenesis
and collaborated with biochemists, cell biologists and microscopists to
understand how yolk was made from serum proteins. This early version of "systems
biology" was as close to scientific heaven as I have ever
experienced.
After graduating from ORNL in 1979, I went into medical research,
working on the dynamics of cell-signaling pathways. Then, in the late 1990s,
complex data generated by biology (such as genomic data) began to need computers
for analysis. Suddenly, research started to look a lot more like what I did in
graduate school.
Ironically, the national labs were largely responsible for this new
phase of biology. The Department of Energy (DOE) started the Human Genome
Project to understand the molecular basis of radiation damage. GenBank began at
Los Alamos National Laboratory in the early 1980s to manage the increasing
amounts of DNA sequence data. The high-intensity x-ray sources found at
national labs began being used to rapidly solve protein structures. These
projects required a level of technical sophistication and scale that were well
beyond most universities. This, together with a lack of departmental
boundaries and a tradition of multidisciplinary teamwork, made national labs
an excellent environment for tackling challenging problems in
biology.
Personally, I found it difficult to implement the multidisciplinary
approach needed for next-generation biology in an academic medical school, so
when I was asked to join Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in 2000, I
jumped at the opportunity.
I found the open, collaborative style of research at PNNL invigorating,
and it was surprisingly easy to assemble a diverse team of scientists. For
example, to look at global changes in gene and protein expression in response to
growth factors, I engaged experimental biologists, bioinformaticians, and
software engineers at PNNL to work closely with our proteomics resource to
stitch together diverse types of data. This allowed us to see how protein- and
gene-regulation patterns differ - work that is still unpublished.
I believe that most academic scientists are unaware of the research that
goes on at national labs, mostly because of our small size and general focus on
advanced technology. Biology has traditionally been more labor-intensive
than technology-dependent, which plays to the natural strengths of
universities. However, this is likely to change in the next several
years.
Working at national laboratories has its own set of problems, of course.
The pool of funds for biological research at DOE is relatively small (FY08
budget: ~$300 million), and is largely dedicated to work on bioenergy,
microbiology, and genomics. We don't have endowment funds and must fund much of
our biological research through National Institutes of Health grants.
Balancing intellectual independence with the need for teamwork can also be
challenging. Nevertheless, I have never been tempted to return to academia. I
can see the future of biological research happening here, and it's hard to resist
the allure of this vision.
Steven Wiley is a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Fellow and
director of PNNL's Biomolecular Systems Initiative.
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