Interdisciplinary Research Gets Formal

See also: "Partners in Research, Competitors in Pay" The year was 1987 and Bill Mahaney was doing what he does; playing in the dirt. Mahaney, a geology professor at York University in Toronto, was standing on a mountain in Rwanda with primatologist David Watts, observing some very hairy miners. The mountain gorillas were digging holes measuring 2 to 3 meters deep, and then eating the soil, presumably, in search of vitamins. Such dining is called geophagy. Courtesy of NASA/Marshall Space Flight CenterPerfectly preserved ancient diatoms, a type of extremophile, from a deep ice core above Lake Vostok, Antarctica. "I did the sampling, ran the stuff, nuked it out, [instrumental neutron activation analysis] and published in a journal called Primates,"1 says Mahaney, who now looks for extremophiles in outrageously cold places. "We got 500-plus reprint requests. People in all disciplines were interested," including zoologists, chemists, biologists, botanists, anthropologists, physicians, and primatologists. "I couldn't believe it." For the 35 years that Mahaney has worked in soil, he sought the know-how of those outside his discipline to help solve riddles. "I just do it because it seems interesting," he says. The reprint requests from all those scientists indicate that Mahaney was not alone in his thinking. Traditionally, the practice of interdisciplinary research (IR) has been an informal, pass-you-in-the-hallway kind of event. And while this casual contact surely still exists, a more formal, organized way of conducting such research has permeated the scientific community over the last few years. A holistic approach to science, it seems, has arrived. "We know that nature doesn't create problems by discipline," says Nathaniel Pitts, director of the National Science Foundation's office of integrative activity. "All the important issues are not strictly biological and not strictly physics-related." Sherry Marts, scientific director for the Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR), says, "One of the things that has happened is that people are [literally] building the housing to do this. It used to be bathroom conversations." Courtesy of the New York Academy of SciencesRodney Nichols One reason that IR is more prominent, according to Rodney Nichols, former president and chief executive of the New York Academy of Sciences, is that some of today's disciplines such as neuroscience, combine numerous scientific studies including cell and molecular biology, psychiatry and physiology. At the academy, he says, interdisciplinary seminars would pack the house. "It was standing room only," he says. "People do vote with their feet." Two other reasons stand out: the sequencing of the human genome and new technologies that allow scientists to examine a problem from various vantage points. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), comments, "[IR] is a very important part of the future, because the problems you want to see tackled, they're going to be large-scale efforts." Some of those problems or questions that lie ahead include determining if there is life on Mars, solving global warming, learning about the effects of stress on early childhood development, and discovering how an organism processes information and then makes decisions. This last question, says James Broach, associate director of Princeton University's Institute for Integrative Genomics, involves the diverse group of biologists, biochemists, neuroscientists, physicists, bioengineers, computer scientists, applied mathematicians, chemical engineers, and a few others. Broach, a professor of molecular biology, says staff will work on this question when the new institute opens later this year. "This is where science is going to be in the next 50 years," he says. Researchers apparently realize this as hundreds of applications have poured in, he says. Another IR-dedicated building in the making is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Last year, HHMI announced plans to build a science center "where scientists from around the world can create the new tools of biology ... and will give preference to projects that bring together diverse individuals and expertise from different environments."2 Money Always Matters More money, of course, is fueling the increase. The National Institutes of Health, NSF, HHMI, and the MacArthur Foundation all fund this research approach, and more of it. For example, Collins' NHGRI just began funding extramural IR projects; the first round went out in September. "We needed to develop concepts and tools ..., but it usually can't be done in a single lab because of the complexity of the genome," says cell biologist Jeff Schloss, program director, technical development coordination. "You need infrastructure." At HHMI, medically based IR projects that the institute funded in 1995 numbered three; in 1999, eight. Courtesy of Bruce McEwenBruce McEwen The MacArthur Foundation, which has established virtual labs that connect various scientists from many universities and research centers to work on large questions, began its program in 1983 with $5 million. Since 1990, the foundation has spent nearly $191 million. Some of this money is going to Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, who started out looking at how rat hormones act in the brain to regulate behavior, and is now investigating allostatic load, the idea that good health maintenance requires optimal levels of stress, both physical and social. Also, the SWHR has started up Isis Fund, which will piggyback onto other sex-based research funding. Successful IR, among other issues, demands that participants develop familiarity with each other's language. Not only does that require learning the meaning of unfamiliar words but also recognizing that sometimes definition is context-dependent. Della Hann, a NIH administrator and an instigator of the National Institute of Mental Health network program, says, for example, that the term regression obviously connotes something different to statisticians than it does to clinical psychologists. Courtesy of Stanford UniversityRuss Altman Often, says Russ Altman, associate professor of genetics and medicine at Stanford University, students and postdoctoral fellows, attempting to emulate their elders, communicate poorly across disciplines. The younger scientists "don't always realize that this is all [jargon.] You need to turn it into plain English when you are speaking to a group that doesn't share that lingo," he says. Along with developing a new vocabulary, successful IR often requires that participants learn a few lessons in sociology; namely about cultural distinctions between different disciplines. As Altman notes, biomedical researchers and computer scientists may enter into collaborations with radically different expectations, based on their lack of awareness about stylistic differences. "The word gene can mean 17 different things to a biologist," he says. "Computer scientists—logical, mathematical thinkers—want a singular definition.... Much of biology is observational, fuzzy stuff. That's very uncomfortable for people who like to write down axioms." Princeton's Broach says that the universal language of the institute is biology. "People who come in have to learn to speak [it]." As for the way that people conduct themselves, he says, "the basic kindergarten rules for life apply." The researchers mentioned consistently that one of the primary obstacles to ubiquitous IR is the departmental structure of universities. For example, an immunologist, says Marts, works in the university's immunology department, gets NIH funding for that work, and the Journal of Immunology publishes it. "You get locked in this lockstep ... to further your career." Courtesy of NASA/Marshall Space Flight CenterSummer in Antarctica: Richard Hoover (left), of NASA's Marshall Flight Center, and Owen Garriotti, former astronaut, look for samples way south of the border. Says Nichols, "In a university world, the disjunction [exists] between professional roots in a single discipline, versus recognizing the research frontiers that require tools that they don't have." In a few spots, the ice is melting. An Internet search turned up a number of colleges involved with IR, in one way or another. At Arizona State University, for example, one document says that "since 1993, Biology's faculty members served among the PIs on 11 interdisciplinary grants, six as Project Director.3" Some universities, says Richard B. Hoover, astrobiology group leader, space science directorate, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, like the University of Washington and the University of Arizona, are putting together programs in astrobiology. "Most realize the importance of learning about other fields," he says. The Payoff Conducting IR has its challenges, but the rewards for successful efforts abound. As Altman notes, there's real excitement when "you take a well described method from one field, and apply it to answer an entirely new problem in another field in a way that no one ever anticipated could be done, and it gives very useful results on the first try." He cites an example using mathematical cluster analysis on microarray data from gene expression studies. For biology, this type of inspection has revealed many new associations between gene products. In bioinformatics, "the cluster algorithms for the microarray data were valuable but the work suggested some of their weaknesses. Now there's a renaissance of interest in this area, [which] will benefit everyone who does cluster analysis, not just the microarray people." McEwen's work on allostatic load has involved input from gerontologists, psychologists, and immunologists. These collaborations, he says, with tongue slightly in cheek, have prompted him to develop "molecular sociology." Before, McEwen says, he paid attention to the animals' stresses induced by the experimenters. Now, he keys in on the animals' interactions: "What the animals do to each other may produce more profound changes in brain structure than what the experimenter does." No one expects to see interdisciplinary research replace traditional investigation. "[IR] is always an ongoing discussion," says Princeton's Broach. Nichols quotes Louis Pasteur: "No, a thousand times no. There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit to the tree which bears it." Christine Bahls can be contacted at cbahls@the-scientist.com. Beth Schachter (bschachter@nasw.org) is a freelance science writer in New York City. References 1. W.C. Mahaney et al., "Geophagia by mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei) in the Virunga Mountains, Rwanda," Primates, 31:113-20, 1990. 2. www.hhmi.org/news/020101.html 3. lsvl.la.asu.edu/biology/text/septessayChair.pdf IR as a Way of Business IN FOCUS | Christine Bahls Interdisciplinary research (IR) is part and parcel to how NASA operates: finding signs of life in Martian soil, for example, would be next to impossible without input from various types of researchers. "NASA has always been good at ... systems integration," says Rodney Nichols, past president of the New York Academy of Sciences. "There is a tradition in engineering and physics to get any tool you need to solve the problem." The problem that led NASA to a formalized IR approach and to create the NASA virtual Astrobiology Institute (nai.arc.nasa.gov) was the question of whether life ever existed on Mars.1 "Essentially, the idea behind the institute is that it was to be fully multidisciplinary, with scientists linked together to solve a variety of problems," says Richard B. Hoover, the astrobiology group leader in the space science directorate, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The University of Arizona, the Johnson Space Center, and Pennsylvania State University are among many of the institute's contributors. The 'life on Mars' query led NASA to another: could ancient findings of microfossils, and live ancient creatures on Earth, be related to the findings on Mars? Antarctica and Mars share similar terrains, says James Dohm, senior scientist, department of hydrology and water resources at the University of Arizona. Dohm says he has been mapping Mars for more than a decade. The cooperation apparently has been paying off. In December, NASA announced that scientists had discovered carbon-based compounds in two meteorites.2 In January, the University of Arizona announced that Canadian and New Zealand scientists had found living microbes, buried deeper than previous finds, in Antarctica. Geologist William Mahaney, from York University in Toronto, who has been collaborating on these extremophile projects, was one of the discoverers. Scientists say the research "opens up the possibility of life on Mars and the possible positions within a soil where it might be found."3 Finding a new way to administer drugs is not confined to a single field either. At Nastech Pharmaceutical Co. Inc. in Hauppage, NY, "The entire discipline of medical sciences [is] represented in one form or another," says Steven C. Quay, CEO. Nastech practices formulation science, whereby an existing drug is reworked so that it can be administered in a different way; in Nastech's case, it is internasally. Quay says that formulation science implies an IR approach that includes pharmacology, biophysics, pathology, anatomy, and medicine. He notes that formulation science became firmly established when Nastech merged with his firm, Atossa Healthcare, two years ago. Quay wonders aloud why others haven't discovered formulation science. (A Web search showed this concept is quite popular in Europe, and is taught at numerous universities.) One American-based company, he says, "probably spent millions" on a drug for Alzheimer disease, which, given orally, is incapable of getting across the blood-brain barrier. Says Quay: "They didn't spend one day on formulation science." References 1. S. Bunk, "Astrobiology makes debut under NASA," The Scientist, 12[13]:1, June 22, 1998. 2. M. Sephton, "Meteorites: Life's sweet beginnings?" Nature, 414:857-8, Dec. 20, 2001. 3. W. Mahaney et al., "Morphogenesis of Antarctic paleosols: Martian analogue," Icarus, 154:113-30, 2002.

Interdisciplinary Research Gets Formal

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