Scientific whimsy is a rare commodity but especially in the august and statistically scoured pages of sober scientific journals, Figure 3 seldom packs a chuckle. But the February 1 issue of the entirely respectable journal Molecular Biology of the Cell contains a wonderful flight of fancy (with serious undertones) by William (Bill) T. Sullivan of the University of California, San Diego. Taking his cue from the imaginary worlds posited by the Italian “magical realist” novelist Italo Calvino, Sullivan envisions a series of fantastical research institutes to explore biological questions that fall between the cracks for conventional institutions.
There would be an Institute for the Study of Non-Model Organisms, Sullivan’s response to the overconcentration by investigators on a small band of overstudied model organisms—round worms, fruit flies, and yeasts—when Earth’s staggering biodiversity awaits, largely unknown, just beyond the lab door. Sullivan’s model non-model organism is “Elysia chlorotica, a stunning green sea slug that feeds on algae and absorbs chloroplasts into its cells, with the chloroplasts remaining functional and the slug becoming photosynthetic.” Here is a creature in which to study genomes, epigenomes, proteomes, microbiomes plus plant and metazoan biology, all in one. (Reality may have caught up with Sullivan’s fancy as a new paper in MBL’s Biological Bulletin by Sidney K. Pierce and colleagues at the University of South Florida demonstrate that E. chlorotica manages horizontal gene transfer from the algae it eats.)
Sullivan proceeds to the Institute for the Adoption of Orphaned Genes (IAOG), which would be chartered to address the frustration of researchers who 15 years after the first draft of the human genome still struggle with long lists of proteins with unknown function. Writes Sullivan, “I imagine other investigators have shared our experience, in which genome-wide genetic screens yield lists peppered with uncharacterized genes.” All these orphaned genes leave Sullivan et al. at a standstill, he says, “like a child peering through the torn wrapping of a birthday present, we vainly try to guess at their function.” Sullivan suggests that the IAOG could publish its results once a year in PLoS Neglected Genes.
His final fantasy institute would be the Institute for the Advancement of Odd Results, a research center for the study of “interesting puzzling observations that have been left by the wayside.” Sullivan provides an architectural description of the lobby. “The entrance to this institute would be a visual celebration of the odd and unusual. Eclectic museums throughout the world would be tapped to loan their displays. The grand opening would include collections of barbed wire, human hair, and UFO debris.”
Biotech billionaires with an urge to truly change the research world should direct their enquiries to the Sullivan lab.
About the Author:
John Fleischman was the ASCB Senior Science Writer from 2000 to 2016. Best unpaid perk of the job? Working with new grad students and Nobel Prize winners.