Change, Change, Change: Heeding the Call

“Do not follow people that stand still.”

—Woodrow Wilson, U.S. President 1913–1921

The future of any field of science depends on its ability to capture the imaginations and harness the energies of the next generation. Over the course of the past 50 years, cell biology has proven to be among the most successful fields in actually doing this, perhaps because of its enthusiasm for adopting new technologies, crossing disciplinary divides, and broadening its horizons.

As we contemplate the next 50 years, cell biologists should own this proud tradition of embracing change, especially as we enter an era of seemingly limitless scientific possibilities coupled with all-too-limited resources. For example, established investigators need to be open to innovative programs and creative funding solutions aimed at fostering the development of the next great minds in cell biology. And we need to figure out new ways to jump start the careers of those just entering the field (Collins, 2010). Over the past 25 years, the proportion of researchers between the ages of 31 and 33 receiving National Institutes of Health grants has fallen from 10% to 1%. In fact, researchers age 70 and older received more grants in 2007 than those under age 30 (NIH Extramural Data Book, 2007).

Francis S. Collins

This trend is a cause for concern. One thing that I have learned from my years in the laboratory is that researchers in the early stages of their careers have fire in their bellies and are not afraid to tackle the really hard biological questions. If we fail to support these fresh, creative minds in their high-risk, high-reward pursuits, we will eventually pay the price in terms of the quality of our cell biology, our biomedical research, and, ultimately, our health care.

For their part, early stage cell biologists must learn to expect a gradual disapperance of traditional disciplinary boundaries. If they target their expectations too narrowly, not only may they face disappointment but also they may miss out on exciting and unexpected opportunities to advance the entire field. The most successful cell biologists I know are the cell biologists who read voraciously about genomics, physiology, biochemistry, bioengineering, imaging, clinical research, and so on. You do not need to be an expert to take an observation that has occurred in another field and apply it to what you know or to find a collaborator who can help. That is often the way major revelations occur.

In my own experience, I have found the interactions between my genomic research lab and cell biologists to be extremely productive. In 2003, my lab identified the genetic mutation responsible for Hutchinson–Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), which is a rare disorder that causes the most dramatic form of premature aging (Eriksson et al., 2003). However, years before we tracked down that mutation in a gene that codes for a protein called lamin A, cell biologists had figured out lamin A's normal structure and function, which is to hold together the cell's nuclear scaffold. Thanks to this solid foundation, we were able quickly to build a rewarding collaboration with cell biologist Robert Goldman and swiftly determine that the mutant protein disrupts the cell's nuclear structure (Goldman et al., 2004). That allowed us to screen cells from HGPS patients for compounds that slowed or reversed that process (Figure 1; Capell et al., 2005). The result was one of the fastest translations on record of a basic research discovery into a promising clinical trial for a previously untreatable and fatal disorder (Kieran et al., 2007).

Figure 1.

Left, dramatic nuclear blebbing of fibroblasts from a patient with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS). Right, nuclear blebbing of HGPS fibroblasts corrected by treatment with a farnesyl transferase inhibitor. Credit: Brian Capell, nHGRI.

Clearly, cell biology is a rapidly expanding discipline that can benefit—and benefit from—many other areas of biological research. Those of us in other areas of biomedical research desperately need cell biologists with the tools, interest, and persistence to unravel the many unsolved mysteries of the cell. Meanwhile, cell biologists need the comprehensive data sets, systematic approaches, and integrated knowledge offered by developmental biologists, neurobiologists, immunologists, biochemists, computational biologists, and geneticists. So, as cell biology moves forward into its next half century and beyond, its most significant change may be to encourage a new spirit of collaboration. We can all benefit from the approach colorfully articulated for a quite different set of problems by President Woodrow Wilson: “I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”