and the environment, etc. It isalmost impossible even to askmany of these questions clearlywithout understanding statisticsand computational approaches.And these problems require ever-sharper experimental tools, manyof which will come from exploitinghighly specific chemical reactionsand interactions.
What are the main challengesyou see for the biomedicalscience community? We aretackling more genomes, ever moreprotein–protein interactions, andmore complex cell behaviors anddevelopmental programs. In theprocess we find ourselves needinglarger research groups, biggermicroscopes, more powerful massspectrometry, more gene arrays,faster throughput in solving crystalstructures, etc. In this way theincreasing pace of biologicaldiscovery is slowly changing thesocial network of biomedicalresearch. I hope we can preserveand strengthen the cottage-industry laboratory, with a single PIsupervising students and postdocs,which still works admirably forsolving many questions. But the oldmodel simply will notaccommodate the new biology thatis emerging everywhere. We needto devise new career paths andadministrative structures tomotivate investigators and rewardcooperative research amongindividual labs and larger researchgroups. A second challenge is theincreasing role of industry andcommerce, relative to government,in funding and motivating researchin academic labs. These changesstem in large part from profoundchanges in the personal, political,and economic values of first-worldsocieties — changes I findalarming. In different ways, bothchallenges threaten the tradition ofindividuality in science, which haseffectively fostered creativity andnew discoveries for more than twocenturies. A scary prospect. I dohope, however, that these fears areunnecessary symptoms ofsenescent nostalgia. After all,human curiosity and creativity arehardy perennials.
S-1212, Box 0450, UC Medical Center,513 Parnassus, San Francisco, California94143, USA.
Current Biology Vol 13 No 23R893
Bubble speakIt is not surprising that we knowquite a lot about the biology ofthe Atlantic and Pacific herring,given their commercial andecological importance, but newwork suggests we may havemissed something: their abilityto produce sounds. That theycan hear is well documented butthe new work suggests that fastpulses of sound emitted by thefish may help individuals remainwithin shoals.
Ben Wilson, Robert Batty andLawrence M. Gill at universitiesin British Columbia, Canada andat a laboratory in Oban inScotland (published in theProceedings of the RoyalSociety B, online), have carriedout studies on captured wildjuveniles from the Pacific andAtlantic held in tanks onshore.They found that the fish canproduce a burst or pulses ofsound lasting between 0.6 and7.6 seconds, which occurredmostly at night.
Video studies showed that thesounds were associated with theexpulsion of bubbles from theanal duct region. They also foundthat sound production increasedper individual with the number ofother fish they were swimmingwith, suggesting the soundshave some social function
between the individuals. And theprevalence of night-time events,when herring are more looselyassociated and lack visual cues,adds to the possibility of a socialfunction.
The bubbles could result fromgas emitted from the gut orswimbladder possibly as aresult of gulping air at thesurface. The researchersprevented fish in oneexperiment from reaching thesurface of the tank but therewas no difference in subsequentsound production.
The sounds were also of anunusual frequency with most ofenergy more than 2kHz, anenergy range which is above therange of most predatory fishes.But it is still within the detectionrange of marine mammals so itwould not be beyond thedetection of all potentialpredators.
If this research does indeedreveal that sound acts as ameans of communicationbetween these fish, it adds tothe growing concern aboutunderwater noise pollution, asubject recently in the newsconcerning the continuingdisorientation and groundingamongst whales and othermarine organisms, known tohave a sophisticated use ofsound communications.
Bubble and squeak: Rapid bursts of sounds emitted by individuals within a shoalof herrings by the apparent release of bubbles from the anal duct region may func-tion as a communication system in these species. (Photo: Oxford Scientific Films.)
