Every now and then one crossespaths with someone who wasclearly born in the wrong century— an avid knitter, a lutist, orsomeone who will actually sitdown and write a letter. Theseanachronisms are harder to findin science, but they do exist. Infact, a small band of themrevealed themselves during aresearch cruise this summer tothe Arctic Ocean.
You might not think to look foran 19th Century scientist on abright red, 420-foot-longicebreaker. After all, the “Healy”is bristling with high-tech toys.There’s a remotely operatedsubmarine that can dive morethan 2500 meters beneath thewaves. The sub’s high-definitionTV cameras reveal in stunningdetail what’s crawling around onthe bottom of the sea. Scientistsaboard the ship also revel atdaily access to email, even inlatitudes so extreme that thecommunication pathway is alow-bandwith connection topolar-orbiting Iridium satellites.
But Bodil Bluhm from theUniversity of Alaska notes withirony that it takes this kind ofset-up to do the kind of scienceshe was born for. And that is toexplore the natural history of aworld that feels pretty wellrevealed by now. As Bluhmstood on deck one July day,sorting excitedly through a catchof sea-floor critters brought up ina trawl net, she remarked, “Iactually would like to have lived150 years ago in the earlyexplorer phase” of oceanexploration. Then she thoughtbetter of it. “I would probablyhave sat at home and waited formy sailor husband to come back,or something. It’s good I’m herenow.”
The Arctic Ocean is one of thefew places left on Earth whereyou can promise in your grantproposal that you will discoverspecies entirely new to science— and not have to worry abouteating your words. This 30-dayexpedition was designed as abiodiversity survey, looking ateverything from invertebratesthat cling to the bottom of icefloes, to graceful pelagic jellies,and benthic brittlestars thatsomehow thrive on the organic
instrumentation, as well as newmolecular tools, including a large-scale collection of transgenic flylines Rubin is planning to develop.
Among the first group ofappointees, computationalbiologist Sean Eddy perhapsstands out as one who was drawnto the essential idea of Janelia.Eddy was looking to have asmaller lab, with what hedescribes as “sort of the MRC andBell Labs kind of style,” thatwould suit his interests insoftware development and hisgroup’s mixture of theoretical andexperimental work.
“I was immediately attracted —even before they knew what theywere going to do at the Farm —when Gerry Rubin startedstanding up and saying ‘this is theculture that we’re going to build.’This was always my dream. I wentup to him after that first time and Isaid, ‘Gerry, I don’t even carewhat you people work on there, Iwant to be considered.’”
Though Eddy plans to initiallycontinue his current work oncomputational biology and non-coding RNAs, he feels a pull in thedirection of studying neuralcircuitry — a problem that heinitially set out to tackle in C.elegans as a postdoc at the MRC.“I do dream about getting backinto neurobiology… at JaneliaFarm I’m going to be surroundedby all these great neurobiologists,and I’ll just be able to soak it allin.” He has a special interest inwhat he sees as Sydney Brenner’s“original question” — how amodel organism like the wormintegrates everything fromsensory input to behavioraloutput.
Conveniently, Brenner will be aSenior Fellow at Janelia, alongwith former Bell Labs director andformer Lawrence BerkeleyNational Lab head Charles Shank.According to Shank, despite theirdifferent interests — Schank has abackground in chemistry and aninterest in optics — he andBrenner are proving that evenSenior Fellows enjoy branchingout. “I’ve had just an enormousgood time talking with Sydney andthe way he thinks about biologyand technology… I’ve learned agreat deal from Sydney already.
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Skirting around thin ice
Richard Harris drops in on anexpedition charting Arcticbiodiversity under increasingthreat from climate change.
Revelations: A survey of Arctic fauna adds to an understanding of the richness of thislittle-known and threatened ecosystem. (Photo: NOAA.)
material that drifts down past thesubmersible’s spotlights as aslow-motion blizzard of mucus.
Indeed, the biologists on thistrip say they probably identifieda dozen new species. (They needto double-check with theirRussian colleagues, who havebeen at this business a lot longerand who have a literature that’sboth rich and hard to access).They’re on the frontier of marinebiology.
The US Coast Guard providedthe icebreaker, which is speciallyoutfitted for scientific research. Itseems the Coast Guard wants tomaintain its ability to travel inthis ice-encrusted ocean, but ithardly needs a border patrol atthis latitude. So the Healy wascommissioned first and foremostto support research. It’s a raisond’etre — or pretext if you prefer— that makes just abouteveryone happy. The Beaglemight have been more romantic,but there’s no beating thecreature comforts of a ship thatcomfortably sleeps well over100, and which offers wide-screen TVs for movies andnetwork news feeds.
The cruise also offers its shareof adventure. Biologists clamberdown Jacob’s ladders on thesides of the icebreaker andventure out onto the floating iceitself. Just a meter of hardsurface separates them from theabyss, which extends more thantwo kilometers below. A CoastGuard officer with a very seriousrifle stands guard for polar bears.And a few especiallyadventurous scientists don drysuits and climb into the –1degree C water to capturectenophores and survey theamphipods that scamper alongthe undersides of the floes.
Like expeditions of yore, thisone, too, has a patron. The USNational Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration’soffice of Ocean Exploration cameup with $2.3 million to fund whatit dubbed the “Hidden Ocean”cruise. NOAA also provided itsown publicity machine – it sentalong a public affairs specialistand a web producer, who puttogether daily reports for theNOAA website
(http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05arctic/welcome.html).
NOAA also footed the cost ofhelicoptering three journalists(myself included) out 125 km tothe Healy, for the final few daysof the cruise.
The cruise is a throwback tothe days when a naturalist likeJohn James Audubon couldsucceed even without beingaffiliated with a storied university.Kevin Raskoff, for example, wasa central player in this trip eventhough he hails from the obscurecampus of California StateUniversity Monterey Bay. Raskofffinds remarkable creatures andtakes remarkable photographs ofthem. Instead of Audubon’spencils and paint brushes, hisartistry is performed with a digitalcamera and a microscope. LikeBluhm, Raskoff feels a bit out ofplace in the year 2005. “Isometimes feel I was born in thewrong century. I’m a naturalist atheart. I’d fit in well in the 1800swhen people were going aroundon wooden ships and discoveringanimals for the first time andspecies were being described leftand right.”
And, like the voyage of theBeagle, this one returned withmore than just a menagerie ofexotic specimens. The two-dozenbiologists brought backquantitative information aboutthe density, distribution andphysiology of organisms on themud, in water column and in theice. And that could proveimportant for a sobering reason.This ocean is rapidly losing itssummer ice cover, in the face ofa multi-decade heat wave thatcould segue into full fledgedglobal warming.
So the Hidden Oceanexpedition may prove to be the“before” snapshot in a worldwhere humans are no longerventuring tentatively out into thevast seas on wooden sailingships, but rather altering thoseoceans from one end of theplanet to the other.
Richard F. Harris is a sciencecorrespondent at National Public Radioand past president of the NationalAssociation of Science Writers. E-mail: [email protected]
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Q & A
Susan GasserSusan Gasser is Director of theFriedrich Miescher Institute forBiomedical Research in Basel,and is Professor of MolecularBiology (Ordinarius) at theUniversity of Basel. She studied atthe University of Chicago, andthen the University of Basel,receiving her PhD with GottfriedSchatz for studies onmitochondrial protein import, anddid a postdoc working on humanchromosome structure with UliLaemmli. From 1986 until 2001,she led a research group at theSwiss Institute for ExperimentalCancer Research, studying thefunctional implications ofchromatin organization in buddingyeast. From 2001–2004, she wasprofesseur ordinaire in theDepartment of Molecular Biologyof the University of Geneva. Otheractivities included nine years onthe Swiss National ScienceFoundation Council, Vice-chairand Chair of the EMBO Council,participation in Human Frontiers’and DFG review councils, as wellas numerous editorial andadvisory boards.
Why did you turn to science asa career ? I was a late-comer.Like most 18 year-olds I had noclue what my calling would be, aphase that lasted until I was 22. Atthe time, I was following the‘Great Books’ programme at StJohn’s College in Annapolis.There, the combination of readingDarwin and dissecting both lungsand gills out of an overly pickledshark-like organism in a sciencetutorial did the trick. I learned thatscience can provide the perfectcombination of concrete realityand the world of ideas. The leapfrom a dissection table to adiscussion of rudimentary organsand evolution was ideal; I still lovebeing in a lab and thinking aboutways to convert biologicalphenomena into ideas.
What are your favorite papers ?There are two. One is Lee
