Notebook

BIOLOGY RULES ... Biology is becoming so popular, it may overtake the humanities as the foundation of American undergraduate education, claims Joseph G. Perpich, vice president for grants and special programs at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Chevy Chase, Md. The institute, America's largest philanthropy, recently announced the allocation of a record $91.1 million in four-year grants to help 58 research and doctoral universities to strengthen their undergraduate programs in biological sciences. Perpich joined the institute a decade ago, to set up the grants program. Since then, undergraduate grants have become the largest segment, totaling more than $425 million. "We started at a time when there wasn't much public support for science education from the NSF (National Science Foundation) or philanthropy," Perpich comments. Nowadays, he says, NSF budgets about $1 billion for undergraduate science programs. More than 50,000 students now receive bachelor degrees in biology each year, more than half of them women. "Students are pouring in," he declares. Curricula are becoming increasingly innovative and interdisciplinary, the Internet is giving students a generalized science education far earlier than in the past, and advances in science technology are enabling young people to conduct experiments previously beyond their capabilities. "We're beginning to see quite remarkable research and papers coauthored by undergraduates that you just wouldn't have seen 20 years ago," Perpich says. He thinks it all adds up to a likelihood that biology eventually will become the bedrock upon which American education is built. For more information on the grants: www.hhmi.org/undergrad98. ... BUT DON'T FORGET ABOUT BIOINFORMATICS Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., is offering a new undergraduate degree program in bioinformatics and molecular biology, something more common at the graduate level. "It has become increasingly clear over the last 5 years that with so much sequencing data and information becoming available, we would be doing a disservice to our students if we didn't offer them training in this emerging area. We have developed new courses, building on our strengths here in computer science and molecular biology, and will hire two new faculty members," says Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, professor and chair of biology at RPI. The program started with university seed money, which was substantially bolstered in mid-September with a four-year $1.2 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, part of a $91.1 million allocation to 58 universities to strengthen undergraduate education in the life sciences. "Bioinformatics is at the intersection of two of the hottest fields of science: molecular biology and computer science. And it's emerging as an essential discipline in its own right," says Joseph Perpich, vice president for grants and special programs at the Chevy Chase, Md.-based HHMI. The RPI program offers courses in drug discovery, protein folding, and bioinformatics, and it is flexible, to match career goals. "A student interested in databases and computer modeling would concentrate on computer science. Someone more interested in cloning genes would take more courses in genetics and advanced molecular biology, to prepare for a career as a bench scientist," explains Nierzwicki-Bauer. Hugh Auchincloss Jr EXAMINING ISLETS For childhood diabetics, insulin therapy provides merely maintenance. Islet cell transplantation could provide a cure. In a search for that cure, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International (JDF) and Harvard Medical School formed the JDF Center for Islet Cell Transplantation at Harvard Medical School. The center will provide approximately $20 million in funding over the next five years to researchers investigating means of replacing islet cells, the body's natural insulin- producing cells, which have been destroyed in people with Type 1 diabetes. Center scientists will especially focus on islet transplantation, tolerance induction, autoimmunity, and expansion of islet cell supply. The center's director, Hugh Auchincloss Jr ., associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, notes that successful islet cell transplantation could provide relief for children with the disease. He adds that organ transplantation is not an option for children, because those procedures--which generally are performed on diabetics whose kidneys and pancreases break down--require a long course of antirejection medication. That medication potentially poses more complications and inconveniences than insulin. "Thirty years of immunosuppression is worse than 30 years of insulin," Auchincloss concludes. Initial funds for the center come from a $5 million pledge named the Florence A. DeGeorge Islet Research Challenge Grant. THINKING ABOUT FUNGI? You should--they cause serious diseases such as oral thrush and Pneumocystis pneumonia. But fungi are even more important from a global perspective. Threadlike mycorrhizal fungi in the soil aid in plants' uptake of phosphorus and act as channels for exchange of fixed carbon between forest trees (S.W. Simard et al., Nature 388:579-582, 1997), thereby contributing to ecosystem vitality. But two recent papers affirm that fungi can be as bad for ecosystems as Pneumocystis is for people. In what could be a barometer of environmental degradation, amphibian populations worldwide have crashed. Unfortunately, specific causes are hard to pinpoint. Now, an international megateam thinks that a fungus called a chytrid is responsible for some of the deaths (L. Berger et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95:9031-6, July 21, 1998). The group identified the chytrid in sick and dead frogs from Australia and Central America. Firming up the chain of causality, they experimentally infected previously healthy animals with fungus from diseased frogs. The world's coral reefs are also under attack, and fungi appear to be prime suspects in some cases. A group of researchers recently discovered that sick coral sea fans in the West Indies are infected with Aspergillus sydowii, previously thought to be a harmless terrestrial saprobe (D.M. Geiser et al., Nature 394:137-138, July 9, 1998), and showed that it can be transmitted to healthy corals. Comparative DNA sequencing, which has revolutionized fungal taxonomy, was crucial in the identification. Team member John Taylor of the University of California, Berkeley, says the pace of discovery should accelerate: Spin-offs from DNA chip technology are certain to make identification even faster, and understanding of both ecology and mycology will benefit tremendously. PHINEAS FEST '98 Psychologists will use any excuse to organize a symposium. This year marks the 150th anniversary of Phineas Gage taking a tamping iron through the head--an accident that pointed scientists toward the realization that the brain's frontal lobes control our personality and behavior. The symposium, held Sept. 12 and 13 in the Vermont town where Phineas met his fate, drew neuroscientists from as far away as Australia and Japan to discuss what we know about how the frontal lobes manage our emotions and how damage to those areas can lead to inappropriate social conduct. Every psychology major knows the story. While Gage was packing down some blasting powder, a spark from his tamping iron accidentally ignited the explosive, sending the three-and-a-half foot rod through his left cheek and out the top of his head. Gage survived, but his frontal cortex--and his personality--did not. Once quiet, respectful, and mentally well-balanced, Gage became "gross, profane, and vulgar to such a degree that his society was intolerable to decent people," wrote the physician who treated him. But Gage is gone, and neuroscientists can only learn so much by examining his skull and reviewing historical descriptions of his churlish behavior. Today, researchers armed with standardized psychological tests and souped-up neuroimaging techniques are studying patients with frontal lobe damage for clues to how that brain region sets our social compass and keeps us from misbehaving. Perhaps not surprisingly, more than a few attendees expressed an interest in analyzing a "presidential" PET scan. COMFORTING CANNABINOIDS Recent findings may help bolster the credibility of marijuana-related drugs as pain relievers (I. Meng et al., Nature, 395:381-3, Sept. 24 1998). In a set of rat experiments, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, using a marijuana-like drug, or cannabinoid, called WIN55,212-2, demonstrated that the ability of cannabinoids to reduce pain is directly related to the activity of a certain population of neurons in an area of the brain called the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM). Having already implicated the RVM in the pain relief or analgesia produced by morphine and other opioids, UCSF scientists decided to investigate cannabinoids' involvement. They calculated the rats' degree of drug-induced pain relief based on the amount of time it took for the animals to move their tails from a heat source (a method called tail-flick latency). By showing that the analgesic effects of the cannabinoids were not reversed by drugs that blocked the analgesic effects of morphine, and that the reverse was also true, investigators demonstrated that cannabinoids can reduce pain by acting on the same set of neurons as morphine, but through a different mechanism. "You could be looking at possible combination therapies," says UCSF postdoctoral fellow and lead author Ian D. Meng referring to potential pain-relieving concoctions of opioids and cannabinoids. He points out that by using a lower dose of cannabinoid with a lower dose of morphine, physicians may be able to reduce, or even eliminate, undesirable side effects. For example, the loss of appetite caused by opioids could be lessened by the appetite stimulating effects of cannabinoids. In follow-up studies, the UCSF lab will look into exactly how the cannabinoids are producing the observed pain reduction at the cellular level.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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