Bio-X initiative may
foster cooperation across disciplines
BY DAVID F. SALISBURY
You accidentally bump into
someone in the lab or hallway and learn something that
changes the course of your own research.
It's an experience many
faculty and students share, says James Spudich, professor
of biochemistry and developmental biology.
"But is there a way
to facilitate the accidental coming together of
individuals from different disciplines?" he wants to
know. "Is there a way to increase the rate of
interactions at the global scale?"
Related
Information:
Spudich and an eclectic
group of faculty members from the schools of Engineering,
Humanities and Sciences, and Medicine not only think it
is possible, but feel that the course of the
much-heralded revolution in the biological sciences makes
it imperative. They are backing an ambitious new
interdisciplinary initiative, called Bio-X, that is
specifically designed to strengthen the links between
faculty and students in medical research, engineering,
chemistry, physics and biology.
Not to be mistaken for the
unknown or alien "X" of TV's popular "X
Files," the new undertaking is conceived as an
eclectic mix of clinical researchers and basic scientists
sharing insights -- but with no predetermined agenda.
Last month, Spudich, the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman
Professor of Cardiovascular Disease, was designated the
head of a four-person Bio-X executive committee that will
oversee its development.
Organizationally, Bio-X is
an attempt to supplement the departmental research
structure with an intellectual hothouse designed to
nurture cross-pollination of the disciplines.
"If it all sounds a
little vague, that is because we are trying to bring
together people who wouldn't otherwise talk to each
other, and encourage them to collaborate on projects that
wouldn't otherwise be done," says Charles Kruger,
dean of research. "So it is impossible to predict
what everybody will be doing three years from now."
But Kruger adds that Bio-X
"may be as important to Stanford as the decisions
made by Terman and his contemporaries 50 years ago."
That view is echoed by
Richard N. Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in
Natural Science, who says that "Bio-X represents a
most significant change in the way Stanford University,
or for that matter any university in the country, goes
about doing research."
For the past year, more
than a dozen faculty members from medical, science and
engineering departments have been meeting weekly in a
rare grass-roots effort to establish a new paradigm for
research and teaching on campus. The key to the success
of Bio-X, the program they conceived, likely will depend
on winning the support of their respective departments.
"Our strength and our
weakness is the departmental structure," says Nobel
laureate Steve Chu, professor of physics and applied
physics and one of the initiative's most enthusiastic
supporters. "The department is the guardian of its
field. It trains students and promotes intellectual
excellence. But the departmental structure means that we
must carve up all intellectual pursuits into
quasi-well-defined segments."
As a result, Chu says,
"we have to appeal to [department chairs'] gambling
spirit and convince them that the potential upside far
outweighs the downside."
Chu, the Theodore and
Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and
Sciences, should know. After all, the prize-winning
physicist can point to the benefits he already has
derived from a long-standing collaboration with Spudich.
The biochemist showed Chu ways to attach tiny micron
spheres to strands of DNA, which allowed Chu to use
optical tweezers to become the first person to study the
physical properties of individual polymer strands. In
return, Chu's students taught Spudich's students how to
build and operate atomic tweezers, which they then used
to study protein motors that move things about within
cells.
The discovery of the
structure of DNA, the master molecule of heredity, is
another good example of the fruits of interdisciplinary
fertilization. Biologist James Watson was encouraged to
enter the DNA-discovery race by physicist Erwin
Schrödinger's comment that the future of biology lay in
the molecular understanding of the gene. Watson went to
Cambridge to work with Francis Crick, a physicist, to
determine the structure of DNA. Working together, they
deduced the structure from the data of X-ray
crystallographers by using rules governing chemical bonds
that had been developed by chemist Linus Pauling, who had
tapped the principles of quantum mechanics.
Channing Robertson, the
Ruth G. and William K. Bowes Professor of Chemical
Engineering, a member of the four-person Bio-X executive
committee, likes to tell about another example. When he
was hired in 1970, Robertson says, he was charged with
establishing a program in bioengineering. So he went over
to the Medical School and began walking the halls and
pounding on doors.
This led him to kidney
specialist Roy Maffly, now professor emeritus of
nephrology. Maffly, in turn, directed Robertson to an
assistant professor at University of California-San
Francisco, Barry Brenner, who now is one of the top
kidney experts in the world. Brenner had developed a
technique for measuring pressure and flow rates in the
capillaries that flow into the part of the kidney where
the blood is filtered, but he didn't know how to
interpret his data.
Robertson and his graduate
student took the data and developed a mathematical model
of the filtration process that explained these readings.
Brenner and Robertson wrote three now-classic papers
based on their collaboration. Today, this analysis forms
part of the basic textbook description of kidney
function.
About the time Brenner was
hired away by Harvard, another kidney expert, Rex
Jamison, joined the Stanford faculty as a professor of
nephrology. He studied a different part of the kidney,
the medulla, where urine is concentrated. He was familiar
with Robertson's previous collaboration with Brenner, and
asked him if he would be interested in working together.
Robertson and his students were able to apply many of the
techniques he had developed with Brenner to the new study
and they also custom-built a video-microscope capable of
seeing red blood cells and measuring their speed as they
move through the capillaries in the kidney. This provided
doctors with a better way to monitor how well the
kidney's filtering system and urine concentration
machinery was working.
Collaborations like those
and the revolution currently taking place in the
biological sciences are the catalyst for the
"exciting adventure" that is the promise of
Bio-X, Spudich says.
"It is our belief
that the time has come in the history of medical
research, engineering, chemistry, physics and biology
that an interdisciplinary approach is needed."
Although Stanford rose
from regional to national prominence in the 1950s by
building and maintaining "steeples of
excellence" -- clusters of world-class researchers
working in various disciplines -- Bio-X proponents argue
that a new approach is needed today to address the
challenges posed by recent progress in the biological
sciences. The solution, they say, just might be Bio-X.
"Bio-X is an
initiative to continue Stanford University's strong
traditions to promote interdisciplinary interactions,
" the new Bio-X web page reads (http://cmgm.stanford.edu/biochem/biox/). "Bio-X will foster the
coming together of leading-edge research in basic,
applied and clinical sciences to enable tomorrow's
discoveries and technological advances across the full
spectrum from molecules to organisms."
Considerable collaboration
has taken place among various disciplines in the past,
but it has been largely conducted on an individual basis.
Soon the human genome project will be finished, opening a
floodgate of new information. At the same time,
microelectronic technology is providing new tools for
analyzing biological parameters, ranging from the
molecular level to that of the whole organism.
"We will be in
information overload very quickly if we don't strengthen
the links between bioinformatics and computer
science," Spudich says.
That is not to say that
Spudich and his compatriots see Bio-X as a one-way street
with all the benefits flowing to the clinical and
biological sciences. They believe the program will be
mutually beneficial.
"I see the
interaction between computer science and the life
sciences [biology, medicine] as a kind of 'next
frontier,' beyond the current explosion of the discipline
due to the Internet, the web and related areas,"
says Jean-Claude Latombe, chair of computer science and a
member of the Bio-X planning committee.
Right now, he says, the
biosciences are raising challenging computational
problems -- such as protein folding and DNA sequencing --
that are of interest to researchers in computer science.
In the longer term, Latombe adds, the biosciences may
inspire new computational schemes and architectures.
In such an atmosphere,
departmental divisions increasingly are a problem because
the "action" in biological sciences and in the
other disciplines is gravitating to various
interdisciplinary boundaries.
"Increasingly, people
in the different disciplines are asking the same
questions," Chu says.
If that indeed is the
trend, then the Bio-X backers want to find a way to
"grease" the interactions. They argue that if
it is done correctly, the initiative could ensure
Stanford's pre-eminence into the next century.
The idea isn't unique to
Stanford, nor did Stanford have it first. In fact, the
project was born more than a year ago when Spudich and
Chu were heavily recruited by different universities that
wanted to do something similar. The two scientists
compared notes and decided they could launch an
initiative at Stanford.
As they talked to fellow
researchers about the idea, Spudich and Chu found
considerable support. They went to their respective
deans, who presented the idea to Kruger and then to
Provost Condoleezza Rice and President Gerhard Casper,
who supported the initial planning efforts.
As it happens, the
University of California-Berkeley, Princeton University,
the University of Chicago, UC-San Diego's Scripps
Institution, Harvard University and the University of
Washington all have similar programs under way, and the
California Institute of Technology is on the verge of
announcing yet another.
Although planning at some
of these universities is more advanced, Bio-X backers say
Stanford has some advantages that will make it hard to
beat.
The university not only
has top research programs in all the key areas, but it
also has a key geographic advantage over two of its
toughest competitors -- Berkeley and Harvard. At
Stanford, university researchers and those at the Medical
Center are separated only by the four lanes of Campus
Drive, whereas Berkeley is separated from its medical
complex (UC-San Francisco) by the San Francisco Bay, and
Harvard Yard is divided from its medical center by the
Charles River.
In addition, Stanford has
a system of eight interdisciplinary centers, ranging from
the Institute for International Studies to the Laboratory
for Advanced Materials, that involve inter-school
collaborations that apparently work quite well.
The heart of Bio-X will be
a new building of about 220,000 gross square feet that
will house about 50 faculty, along with classrooms, an
auditorium and a cafeteria. Researchers envision that it
would sit between the Medical School and the Gates
Computer Science and Mudd Chemistry buildings.
Researchers want the
architectural setting to invite foot traffic from
surrounding buildings, and they think it should have a
first-class cafeteria for pleasant lunch discussions and
a large auditorium where lectures on interdisciplinary
topics will draw a good crowd.
Most important, clinical
researchers and basic biologists, physicists, chemists
and engineers would be randomly located throughout the
space to facilitate serendipitous encounters.
Although funding, plans
and permits must be obtained before ground can be broken
on the building, the first manifestation of the Bio-X
program will appear next fall with the course
"Frontiers in Interdisciplinary Biosciences."
It will be taught every quarter and has been assigned the
course number 459 in a number of departments from all
three schools: Engineering, Medicine, and Humanities and
Sciences.
The course will consist of
three seminars per quarter, and lecturers will be
internationally renowned researchers whose work is
distinguished by interaction between the life sciences
and other disciplines. What sets the new course apart is
the fact that students will meet prior to each seminar
for a one- to two-hour tutorial that will be designed to
"level the playing field" among students from
different disciplines.
"This turns the
seminars into real teaching tools, and will show the
students that Bio-X is a serious enterprise," says
Robertson.
"The success of Bio-X
must come from the faculty and it has to stay with the
faculty," adds William Mobley, the John E. Cahill
Family Professor and chair of neurology, and a member of
the Bio-X executive committee.
"In biology, to make
something go faster, you have to raise the concentration
of one of the reagents. In Bio-X, we are raising the
concentration of all the reagents, so the program is
biologically defensible!" SR
|
