Of Schemes and Memes Blog

Lenses on Biology: Searching for zen within genomes – essay from a PostDoc – Marine Biology

This week’s issue of Nature includes a special Outlook supplement, Lenses on Biology. The 5 lenses are essays adapted from chapters in a new, interactive undergraduate textbook, Principles of Biology, published by Nature Education. The essays focus on what we know about cancerstem cellssynthetic biologyocean health and climate change.

To tie in with this special, we asked five biological scientists at different levels of their careers – from high school student to post doc – to tell their personal stories about why they decided to study one of the five featured subjects. Enjoy this closer look at what motivates scientists! 

Our third post is by Postdoctoral researcher Holly Bik, she reflects on her educational career path and her love for the marine environment. 

Dr. Holly Bik is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Jonathan Eisen’s lab at the University of California, Davis. Her current research uses high-throughput sequencing technologies (Illumina, 454) to study the community structure and phylogeography of microbial eukaryotes in marine sediments, with a specific focus on deep-sea habitats. Holly is a strong advocate of integrative biology, aiming to merge expertise and synthesize historically disparate fields such taxonomy, molecular biology, computer science and design. 

Buddhists believe that when Siddhartha Gautama fled his princely upbringing inIndia, it was his disillusionment and confusion that spurred a quest for knowledge. When he reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he gained supreme clarity and finally understood. Buddha’s teachings expound our divided nature: our ordinary nature which is driven by emotions such as fear and anger, and our true nature of unwavering awareness.

In biology, a species also has two selves: how it looks (its phenotype) and its genetic code. The vast spectrum of life on earth is entirely driven by four little letters: A, T , C and G. These four letters represent the complex molecular structures found in DNA, which encode sophisticated living beings. Phenotypes only tell part of the story, whereas the genome encapsulates the true nature of a given organism.

As a scientist, I have always sought to explore the scientific and philosophical nature of life on earth. My internal dialogue is equally comprised of questions such as “Why am I here?” as well as “What makes this work?” In addition to my scientific roles as a marine researcher and computational biologist, I hold a yoga teaching certification and maintain a daily meditation practice. My scientific career and personal pursuits have always been driven by a thirst to understand. I’m a voracious consumer of knowledge, and I have too many interests for my own good – music, physics, design, theatre, fashion, art, sports, astronomy, biology and the natural world.

I can’t remember the exact moment I decided to pursue a career in science, but it occurred during high school. I was entranced by the marine realm, but my obsessions were rather unconventional; I shunned whales in favor of jellyfish and preferred burrowing through salty mud instead of hunting dolphins through binoculars. Despite my deep-sea yearnings as a child, I would have never envisioned a career focused on DNA. My adventures involved scrambling around tidepools, reading books about shipwrecks and collecting pondwater to gaze at under the microscope. I remember being enthralled by a museum event with a live satellite link to scientists using underwater ROVs (Remote Operated Vehicles). I wanted to be one of those explorers on the front lines.

As my educational career progressed, I was often surprised at the topics that unexpectedly seized my attention. The invisible world of genes and proteins was as gripping as any novel, but these modern scientific stories were so new, with most textbook tales lingering unfinished. I still loved the sea, but learned that traditional marine biology is firmly rooted in species descriptions and ecological studies; I knew I didn’t have the patience to sit at a microscope, nor the stamina for long stints out in the field.

I realised that success requires you to define your own niche. My niche, I’m finding, lies at the intersection of tradition and innovation, using cutting-edge genomics and computational biology to answer longstanding questions about deep-sea ecosystems. The deep-sea is a vast, complicated ecosystem, we know little about the “big picture” and next to nothing about the cellular machinery which breathes life into a specialized and sometimes grotesque fauna.

Image 1:  Unidentified pycnogonid (sea spider) species inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic ridge surrounding the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture zone in the North Atlantic

Image 2: Assortment of sea stars inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic ridge surrounding the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture zone in the North Atlantic 

While any job is stressful, as a postdoc I’m on the bottom rung of the academic career ladder, under pressure to publish and to find funding. But when you strip away these weights and anxieties, take a deep breath and sit down at the lab bench or computer, the experience can be transcendental; there’s a certain zen to data analysis. An academic career is unlike any other: thrilling and flexible, yet competitive and, at times, unrelenting. I’ve stuck to a research career because it allows me to continually feed my sense of wonder and awe. I can identify questions with no answers and finally do something about it.  No longer am I restricted to reading books and shouting questions into thin air. Being a postdoc at a large research university is definitively empowering. I have control over the direction of my own path. In many ways, technology is the vessel of modern explorers. Instead of sailing to exotic lands, we run algorithms on massive supercomputers – the stuff of science fiction.

Unidentified crustacean species inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic ridge surrounding the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture zone in the North Atlantic

Eastern philosophy implores us to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary. Quantifying simplicity to understand the complex – above all else, this principle is the crux of modern genomics. Mankind’s quest to understand the universe may indeed lie within a single cell.

Dr. Holly Bik holding an unidentified sea star inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic ridge surrounding the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture zone in the North Atlantic

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