Using New Science Resources: A Key To Staying Competitive

With today’s pressure on researchers to publish papers frequently, the more time they can free up for pursuing their investigations, the better their chances of success. It takes time to accumulate good, reliable data to analyze the data astutely; and to write up the research accurately and clearly, either for publication or for inclusion in a grant proposal. Fortunately, just as modern science has created the means to gather better data faster, the science community also has bred a host of time-saving tools and services that reduce the need for doing repetitive and uninteresting chores and enable the scientist to attend to the more creative aspects of research. Many new laboratory services, both private and government-supported, are available to help you collect and interpret data or to teach you to boost the efficiency with which you use the instrumentation required for your research. Additionally, new computer software designed specifically for scientists can speed the work of data analysis, help put research results into usable form, and assist in organizing work schedules. And when the time comes to write up your research or to submit grant proposals, an increasing number of consulting services are springing up to help you prepare your text. Lab Services Whereas collaborators and consultants can provide valuable professional expertise, a rich source of information and training are the service companies that specialize in a particular process or type of operation. Because money is in short supply, many funding agencies are not anxious to support re-education of trained scientists. Thus, if you are a biochemist embarking on a project that requires electron microscopy, the best resource is to find a collaborator already trained in ultrastructure work. But that is not always easy, given that most professionals are already up to their ears in their own work and generally not anxious to “spread themselves thin.” In such situations, you can often find service laboratories that will do the work for you—for example, analyze samples for you through the use of electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, HPLC, or circular dichroism on a fee-per-sample basis. Sometimes these service laboratories are affiliated with the companies that sell the instrumentation required for the particular method. Often the personnel at the companies are sufficiently experienced with the technique to help you formulate the specific experimental protocol and to analyze the data they obtain for your samples. It’s a good symbiotic _relationship: You get to use a technique for which you can’t afford the instrumentation—with a consultant thrown in. For their part, the companies hope the technique will become sufficiently indispensable so that you will purchase their instruments. In some cases, these companies— sometimes via an intermediary finn—will help you identify sources of funding for the instrument and even will help write the relevant parts of the proposal. Similarly, a number of biotechnology companies now produce, according to your specifications, specialized chemicals such as monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies, plasmids, and c-DNA libraries. Additional services offered by these firms include DNA sequenc.ing, site-directed mutagenesis, and diagnostic screening, Other companies synthesize custom peptides and other complex molecules or sequence proteins you have isolated. If your lab is not set up to make or do these things, and if you will need them for only a few experiments, letting a group that is well versed in, and equipped for, a given process do the work will save you lots of time—and will help you avoid the usual frustrations of getting a new procedure to work. If you do need to leam a new technique, some companies have training programs as well as videotapes that teach laboratory personnel to do specific procedures. A variety of other laboratory services are also available. For example, several centers provide materials, instrumentation, or services to which researchers may not otherwise have access owing to limited facilities in their own laboratories. An example is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cell Culture Center, a National Institutes of Health resource available to researchers who require large quantities of animal cells, cell products, and viruses. Products and services are obtained by application and are subject to committee approval. Researchers are charged only for materials used on the project, plus a small labor cost. Likewise, the Cooperative Human Tissue Network of the National Cancer Institute procures, preserves, and distributes tissues from patients with specific diseases for research purposes. In a somewhat different vein, the Protein Data Bank, located at Brookhaven National Laboratory and supported by NIH and the National Science Foundation collects, stores, and distributes structural data on proteins, other macromolecules, and viruses. The National Biomedical Research Foundation maintains a Protein Identification Resource, with nearly 10,000 sequence entries for searching patterns, identities, and similarities. Other similar storehouses of information include the Genetic Sequence Data Bank (Gen-Bank), operated at Los Alamos National Laboratory and supported by funds from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (see story on page 4); a Nucleotide Sequence Data Library, maintained at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany; and the National Facility for Analytical Ultracentrifugation at the Biotechnology Center of the University of Connecticut, which provides scientists with access to precision molecular weight and other measurements not readily available at many laboratories. Tailored Software Another resource for scientists comes in the form of software. Programs exist, for example, to help with molecular modeling and statistical analyses, and several database management packages are tailored for storage, retrieval, and analysis of medical and other research data. These programs can mathematically manipulate, statistically analyze, and graphically display your data. In this category, the Biomedical Research Technology Program of NIH’s Division of Research Resources announced, in July, the availability of PROPHET workstation software, a fully documented program supported by a group of scientific software professionals. Moreover, a number of word processing programs are designed specifically for scientific writing and can handle mathematical equations and complex formulas, including multiring organic structures. Also available are several programs that help with grant fund accounting and others that help with scheduling. A piece of software in the last category that I have found extremely helpful allows you to plan your calendar, years ahead, and will interrupt any program at a specified time to remind you—while you are engrossed in writing a grant proposal or planning next month’s experiments—to change the dialyzate, start a reaction, or call home to see if the baby-sitter has arrived. Manuscript Consulting Other resources are designed specifically to aid scientists in the preparation of grant proposals and research papers. For those needing help with the writing process itself, numerous services are now available to help scientists who are foreign-born, or who otherwise have difficulty with scientific writing; These resources generally range from simple editorial services that merely correct grammar to sophisticated writing consultants who restructure a document so that it has good logical flow and conforms to the style and instructions required by a specific journal or granting agency. With the mounting pressures for scientists to increase their productivity and personal bibliography, many small, high-tech businesses and service providers have emerged. If you’re not familiar with a technique you need to use, look around for, a resource that provides experts to do it for you and help you interpret the results. If you calculate the value of your time into the equation, such services are often well worth the cost. Liane Reif-Lehrer is the author of Writing a Successful Grant Application (2d ed., Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1989).

Using New Science Resources: A Key To Staying Competitive

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Liane Reif-lehrer

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October 1989

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