We all like to blow off steam, in our own ways. Some do yoga, some run, whereas others eat vast quantities of ice cream while killing brain cells with House reruns (was that an overshare?). MIT students do it in a way all their own, complete with a test of gravity, aerodynamics, and mass destruction. Sort of.

Every year, MIT undergrads celebrate the last day they can drop a class without it appearing on their transcript by, appropriately enough, dropping a piano from the top of a building.

HT Bostonist

And this is far from the only time of the year that MIT students scale great heights and push the envelope of good behavior, albeit in a geeky way. For a pictorial tour of MIT Senior class pranks, click here.

Jumping out of one’s comfort zone, scientifically, can be terrifying enlightening. As part of this week’s ongoing Cambridge Science Festival, investigators from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT gave a series of 30 minute talks (tangent: all talks should be 30 minutes, not too long, not too short, no one falls asleep) covering research areas from the macro scale of human cognition and child development to the microscopic details of cellular neuroscience.

Continue reading →

Ever sit through a seminar and wish you had another hour of background to understand? Combine that background information with the current state of cutting edge science, and you have a Nanocourse, a new lecture format instituted at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Meg Bentley, an instructor and teaching fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at HMS, coordinates and runs the nanocourse program. Here, she answers a few of my questions about her career path, her current job, and how other schools can implement and benefit from a nanocourse program. Meg welcomes any and all of your questions in the comments or to meg_bentley [at] hms.harvard.edu. Thanks, Meg!

1. What is your professional background, and how did you come to be involved with Nanocourses at HMS? What is your current role in running the Nanocourses?

I did my PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and then I came to HMS and did a traditional research post-doc in the Department of Cell Biology in Randy King’s lab. At that time, I considered going the traditional route and applying for faculty jobs. But my undergraduate experience at a small liberal arts college made me want to include teaching as a significant part of my career as scientist, so, when this position came up in the department it was a unique opportunity. I get to focus on curriculum development and pedagogical innovation while staying in the fast-paced, high-end research world at HMS.

I was hired in January 2006 as a curriculum fellow. It was my task to administer and implement a new course format, that we call ‘nanocourses’. At that time faculty members in the cell bio department had just created the format, and it was my job to figure out how to execute these courses and make them successful both for graduate students and the wider science community. In this position, I identify potential nanocourse topics, recruit appropriate faculty to teach, help faculty try out new teaching tools, manage student registration and assessment and generally set and enforce high standards for this non-traditional and abbreviated course format. Yes, it is a full-time job!

2. Please briefly describe the Nanocourse format and types of topics covered.

Nanocourses consist of two class meetings. During the first meeting, 2-3 faculty members each give a 1-hour lecture. But, nanocourses are not research talks by expert faculty! These lectures are intended to provide a historical and basic introduction to a topic that will allow nanocourse participants to understand and appreciate the current state of that particular field. We encourage lecturers to include a discussion of the current research areas, specific experimental approaches and new technologies within a field. This lecture-based session is open to anybody, you need not be affiliated with Harvard or even be a scientist! The second meeting is discussion-based and is only for students taking the nanocourse for credit. Typically, around 15 students take the course for credit, however we have held nanocourses with just 1 student and others with 25. This second session is intended to be a forum for the students and the faculty lecturers to engage in continued discussion of the topic. The goal is to have students practice the skill of scientific discussion, integrate the course material with their own knowledge, discuss experiments that address important unanswered questions and generally form an opinion on the direction the field should take. The format of these discussion sessions is flexible, but we encourage our faculty to utilize teaching strategies different from traditional paper discussions. There is almost always an assignment required for students to receive credit. Nanocourses are graded on a pass/fail basis.

Graduate students receive 1/6th of a full course credit per nanocourse completed. Therefore, grad students must take 6 nanocourses to fulfill the equivalent of one semester-long course. Because of this credit structure, grad students can customize their own education. I think that this structure allows graduate students to find connections and themes in disciplines that might seem unrelated. Also, one could argue that they teach students to become comfortable with and see the benefits of multi-disciplinarian approaches in science. Nanocourses have not been offered long enough to give us time to ask how this type of curriculum enhances student learning at HMS, but in the next few years, we plan to ask these questions of our curricular innovation.

Since their launch, we have offered anywhere from 8-18 nanocourses per semester. So far, 67 (I think!) unique nanocourses have been offered. Therefore, a wide range of attendees (students, post-docs, faculty and technicians) have been able to engage in recurring and accessible continuing education, learning about topics related to their own research or entirely new subjects. We believe that this continuing education will inform researchers’ choices in their own work, teach them to find ideas from seemingly unrelated disciplines and inspire collaboration.

3. What was the inspiration/driving force for starting the Nanocourses?

Now that I think back on this process, there are tons of reasons that drove the development of this course structure. These are in no particular order! Their abbreviated nature allows for the very rapid implementation of nanocourses. For instance, we launched 8 nanocourses just a couple months after they were cleared as credit-worthy. Second, nanocourses were created in order to be able to develop curriculum that was by nature, integrative. By inviting multiple faculty members to lecture on a central and focused topic, you will be able to see how their approaches and thought processes differ. Next, at the time they were implemented, there was no format beyond more traditional semester-length and paper reading courses that reached our senior graduate students and the rest of the scientific community. We wanted to create a format that accommodated the busy schedules of this population. Finally, they were a mechanism by which any faculty member (no matter how busy keeping up with research and writing challenge grants) could realistically teach students in our graduate programs! Three months after they were cleared by the GSAS as credit-bearing, we launched eight nanocourses.

4. What has the response been like within the Harvard community?

The response has been really amazing. We average around 50 people per 3-hour nanocourse and this semester we are offering 17 different nanocourses. We have had senior students and post-docs lecture in nanocourses and we plan to have junior students organize nanocourses in the future. I believe that this is a valuable and sustainable addition to the graduate curriculum at HMS and I think it is a permanent addition to the educational community. In the coming years we plan to begin assessing student outcomes, generating a digital library of nanocourses, and all sorts of other innovations that will keep the format fresh and high impact!

The first couple of years that nanocourses were offered, we kept careful track of the format. Based on these records, colleagues and I published a paper on the format in the Summer 2008 issue of CBE-Life Sciences Education. It is a great read if you are planning on implementing anything like this at your institution.

5. How do you choose which topics to cover in new Nanocourses?

The topics come from all over. Now that nanocourses are a known and popular curriculum format at Harvard University (HU), I get unsolicited suggestions from students, faculty and folks just walking by me in the hallways. I also get ideas for nanocourse topics by reading the primary literature. Really, anything with biomedical relevance can be a nanocourse topic. We have technical nanocourses that teach researchers how to improve their use of particular techniques, and courses on topics that are included in our graduate curriculum, like mRNA processing and the ubiquitin-proteasome system. If there is someone willing to teach it, then we can organize a nanocourse on it. You can see our list of current and past nanocourses here.

One last point to make on the choice of nanocourse topics… in science, there is a constant buzz of emerging fields. As an academic institution, it is our responsibility to inform our students of these emerging fields, however it can be difficult to build an entirely new course around these emerging fields or to incorporate into an already-bursting semester-length course. Therefore, the nanocourse format allows us to rapidly and easily develop courses on emerging fields without the teaching and administrative burden of a full-semester length course.

6. What guidelines or advice do you give to faculty members designing a Nanocourse lecture?

Begin at the beginning! In our research, we have found that about half of each nanocourse audience is a beginner in the topic. This means that the first lecturer is tasked with explicit description and introduction of the fundamental concepts and seminal papers in the field. This can be difficult for some faculty members who more often give very specific research talks on their own lab’s work, but most of them do a great job!

Also, I try to give faculty members the liberty and the opportunity to get creative with their teaching in a nanocourse. While there are guidelines for nanocourses, there are no rules! Most of the time the faculty follow the guidelines though…

7. Do you have any advice or resource suggestions for other institutions interested in starting a Nanocourse program?

Yes! Most of our 135 nanocourse faculty lecturers have come from our own institution. And we certainly recognize that we are in a luxurious position, because you can’t throw a rock in Boston without hitting a Harvard faculty member (i.e., there are a lot of HU faculty). So, if you are at an institution with fewer faculty to draw from, I have the following suggestions. First, I recommend using invited speakers. In this case, you can have one faculty member give a seminar essentially prepping students to hear and critique the invited lecturer’s talk. The discussion session then includes the visiting scholar. We have done this at HMS and it is exciting for the students and the visiting speaker. Second, I recommend using online resources for lecturers, like the iBioSeminar offered through the American Society for Cell Biology. Companies might also be a resource for lecturers. This can serve as a recruiting tool for the company (if anyone is recruiting anymore!?) and a way for them to engage potentially more sustainable academic customers. Thirdly, I think that advanced students and post-docs can give nanocourses if given sufficient guidance on lecture prep and pedagogical strategy. Using these alternatives means that other institutions may have fewer and more carefully chosen topics, but if implemented with enthusiasm and attention, they can be integrated into the more traditional curriculum as a fun and exciting element.

If you are at a big institution, then my strongest recommendation would be to higher an individual (like myself) who is the face and go-to person for launching these nanocourses. This will make faculty more likely to volunteer to teach (because they have a teaching assistant who handles everything but the lecturing), and make students more willing to take a chance on a crazy course format (because they have a figurehead who handles registration, maintains high standards and seeks their feedback). This person is responsible for choosing nanocourse topics and faculty and for assessing each individual nanocourse. Just because the nanocourses are abbreviated courses does not mean that they run themselves!

Today is Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, also known as Marathon Monday. The Boston Marathon is the oldest annual marathon in the world, with this year marking the 112th running of the 26.2 mile race.

Spectators line Beacon St, near mile 24 of the Boston Marathon.

Marathon running has come a long way since the largely mythical run of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger, who ran from Marathon to Athens to inform of the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon. The thing is that Pheidippides died on the spot, right after delivering his message of victory. Science and training have filled the gap since then and significantly decreased the time it takes runners to complete the course. The runners’ equipment, such as the shoes and clothing, has obviously evolved past the leather sandals and togas favored in the times of the Greeks, but science has also affected nutrition and water intake, likely the two biggest factors that keep today’s runners fast and healthy.

The human body can only store approximately 2,000 kcal of glycogen, the simple carbohydrate that is easily broken down for energy. That energy translates into about 20 miles of non-stop running, not enough to complete the grueling 26 mile course. Once the ready glycogen supply is depleted, runners can “hit the wall,” or run out of energy and feel a wave of fatigue. Adequate training can combat the effects of glycogen depletion. Some runners choose to consume glycogen gels, specially formulated with sugars, salts, and caffeine to boost the athlete’s energy and help them complete the run.

Gel packs are commonly composed of specific ratios of simple and complex carbohydrates – 20% simple carbohydrate, such as fructose, and 80% complex carbohydrate, such as maltodextrin. This ratio has been shown to maintain a stable level of blood sugar for approximately 45 minutes after consumption. Tables and charts dictate the frequency with which the gels can be safely and effectively consumed in the course of the race, depending on how quickly the athlete runs. The level of water consumption is critical in aiding the spread and digestion of the gel. Too much water and you risk hyponatremia, a condition in which excessive water intake leads to a drop in plasma salt levels, leading to seizures, vomiting, and even death.

Water station for the runners.

Marathon runners have come a long way since the days of Pheidippides. The sport is now safer than ever, though certainly not easier. Every year when I watch the runners streak by, I am amazed and awed by their power and determination. It’s an unbelievably moving event and is a large part of the reason why I love living in Boston. It’s almost enough to make me start running… a mile or two.

Working in a lab for any amount of time can lull one into a false sense of security. It’s easy to forget that labs are packed full of dangerous chemicals and reagents, which can explode and cause serious damage if not treated appropriately. This morning, Merck employees received a rude reminder of this oft-forgotten fact, when a small explosion in a storage room forced the evacuation of the entire Merck building, along with a neighboring Emmanuel college building in the Longwood area.

Two workers from a chemical waste disposal company entered a storage room to pick up chemical waste. A local news station reported that “Somehow the chemicals mixed or spilled and the two workers said they heard a small pop and saw a little explosion. “There was a reaction,” said Fleming. “Something caused a minor popping… a little flame.””

The workers sealed off the room and were unharmed by the explosion. Fire trucks and biohazard response teams came on the scene to deal with what was later classified as a “level 3 hazmat situation”.

Just imagining losing all of my data in a lab fire is enough to give me a small panic attack. Fires in labs no matter what the cause, are not very rare. The building I work in now almost burned down from an electrical short; lab members ran out of the building with key reagents and notebooks in hand. Horror stories of the lab fire variety are welcome in the comments, as reminders that 1) scientists are seriously hard-core and cool because they are surrounded by danger, and 2) it is important to back up data and to take good care of potentially dangerous chemicals and chemical waste.

A biological screen is only as good as the validation experiments that follow. Long gone are the days when a microarray data dump (or data vomit, as I like to refer to it) made for a good publication, not to mention interesting reading. I still shudder from the memory of reading (or more accurately, staring blankly at) pages and pages of up or down-regulated genes with no context and no explanation to their interaction, involvement, or function in the problem at hand. It’s not enough to pull out novel players in an siRNA screen if the experiments to confirm and extend those results are not done. Screens and other techniques with the potential of providing large data sets are finally coming into their own (or perhaps they had reached “their own” long ago and I am just now catching on).

One of the biggest science stories of the past few years was the generation of iPS (induced pluripotent stem cells) from fully differentiated adult cells, providing an alternative to deriving embryonic (ES) stem cells from embryonic tissues. All it took was the expression of a handful of key genes encoding transcription factors important for the maintenance of cells in an undifferentiated, pluripotent, stem cell state. Since that key study, and the many that followed, the discovery and characterization of novel regulatory pathways has “bootstrapped” or built upon/extended the known network of factors, limiting both the search and the results.

Stephen Elledge, a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues, took a different approach to identify new pathways important for the maintenance of cells in an undifferentiated, pluripotent state, capable of self-renewal – the hallmarks of ES cells. Elledge’s group used an siRNA screen to identify genes that when knocked down, lead to ES cell differentiation and loss of pluripotency. The investigators successfully navigated the murky waters of this genome-wide screen by performing a barrage of follow-up validation experiments which demonstrated that the genes they pulled out were in fact involved in and important for the maintenance of ES cells in an undifferentiated form. The authors narrowed down the 148 candidate genes to 104 by ensuring that multiple siRNAs led to the same de-differentiation phenotype and that the targeted genes are in fact expressed in embryonic tissues and stem cell lines. Of those, the authors selected 8 genes to pursue further – I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during those discussions. How do you choose 8 out of 100? Really wish they had shown their reasoning in the paper.

Four divergent assays demonstrated that the 8 chosen genes were important for maintenance of ES cells, including changes in ES cell morphology and marker expression following knockdown of the chosen ones. Based on the strength of the phenotypes observed in these validation experiments, the authors narrowed their work further to two genes encoding the transcriptional regulators Cnot3 (I pronounce this as ‘snot’. I don’t know why) and Trim28. Both of these transcription factors were expressed at high levels in embryonic tissues and ES cell lines; expression levels decreased upon differentiation. The authors then identified 1669 binding sites for Cnot3 and Trim28 in the mouse ES cell genome, including the promoter regions of multiple pluripotency genes. Cnot3 and Trim28 were found to form a transcription network, distinct from those regulated by previously characterized pluripotency regulators regulating gene expression of a cluster of 326 genes.

Talk about follow through. This group covered their bases and made a screen, which at its core is nothing but data vomit, into a building block for a new avenue in iPS and ES biology. They defined one piece of their data, leaving the rest for others to pursue. Sometimes anal retentiveness (is that a word) is really not a bad thing.

–

Hu, G., Kim, J., Xu, Q., Leng, Y., Orkin, S., & Elledge, S. (2009). A genome-wide RNAi screen identifies a new transcriptional module required for self-renewal Genes & Development, 23 (7), 837-848 DOI: 10.1101/gad.1769609

MIT faculty recently voted unanimously to make all publications free and available on the web as part of a trend in Boston-area universities toward open access publication. This move follows Harvard University faculty passing a similar vote last February as well as the NIH policy which states that all NIH-funded studies must be deposited into PubMed Central. These new developments are strong statements about the way scientists see science publishing and the distribution of new findings.

Open access to scientific literature, while contentious in many circles, can be a lifeline to university libraries struggling with the costs of journal subscriptions. Additionally, the new policies at MIT and Harvard will make publications not only free, but available online, a key move toward speeding the dissemination of scientific advances and making them available to a wider range of interested readers.

The policies clearly have support from the researchers themselves, but the execution of the policies remains a sticking point. The many details of copyright-transfer agreements, proper submission forms, and making sense of which journals will provide what service can seem like a daunting set of tasks for researchers when piled on top of the already involved publication process. The librarians at Harvard Medical School’s Countway library understand this, and have developed a program which will automate the deposition of HMS publications into PubMed Central as well as HMS’s own voluntary online open access publication server.

The importance of these developments is two-fold. The first is that scientists at top institutions support open access publishing models, a fact that could potentially ripple through multiple other academic institutions. The second is that the universities themselves are making the transitions easier, by setting up programs to automate and simplify the process of making publications free and available online. The question that Corie posed last year following Harvard’s announcement of the move toward open access stands – what will the publishers do in the coming years? How will they adapt their current business models and practices to accommodate the researchers, institutions, and the NIH who insist on the deposition of articles in PubMed Central and other servers?

I had the opportunity and the pleasure to speak with Dr. Blair Strang at Harvard Medical School, a virology researcher who had recently taken the time to speak to 7th graders about viruses and working in science. Dr. Strang gave a 10-15 minute talk and opened the floor to the middle schoolers to answer questions they may have about viruses, immunity, and what it’s like to be a scientist. Below is an informal interview I conducted with Dr. Strang about his experiences in a classroom, and why he, as an academic researcher, bravely (and gamely) ventured into a science classroom full of 14 year-olds.

Please describe for me how you became involved with teaching the class and the purpose of your involvement.

I became involved through a friend, who is currently a 7th grade teacher at a middle school and she teaches maths and sciences. They have had classes with themes in infection and immunity, with a module entitled “Viruses”. Rather than having a very structured textbook-led session, they were looking for someone to come in and not only try and give the students an insight to what we [scientists] do on a day to day basis as a career, but also answer one on one questions they have from the base of knowledge they already had and things they simply hadn’t thought of yet.

How did you design your talk? What considerations went into how you designed the talk.

Not having an insight to their knowledge base made it difficult to know which issues to address, but I quickly realized that I would have to keep the points in my presentation as general as possible. I started with the very basics of how viruses are DNA or RNA genomes encased in protein and made some points about replication of viral genomes. I them moved on to talk about more “practical” topics such as vaccination and how viruses are now being used in gene therapy. We then used the rest of the time for Q and A. [Blair started Q and A by throwing out some questions to the students.] “What viruses have you heard of? Why are viruses important? Who has had a vaccination? Who has heard of viruses in the news and what were they discussing?”

In different classes people brought up different viruses, different things they had heard. Based on their answers we could direct the rest of the discussion.

How did you find the students’ responses, the level of their background knowledge?

There was very much a level of interest and a level of response, not only because the structure of the class is a departure from what they usually have, but also because I think I was able to make it clear to the students that viruses directly affect them.

I was impressed by their level of understanding of broad biological principles and doubly impressed by the thought that had been put into the questions posed to me. I think I should mention, however, I think I encountered the challenge that is faced not only in that school or particular age group, but a problem that is found everywhere; How do you outline the principles of biological system when a detailed knowledge base is required? For example, I felt that the students grasped that viruses are composed of nucleic acids and protein but while they were familiar with the concept of DNA they were not familiar with RNA and while they were familiar with the concept protein they were not familiar with the concept of where protein comes from. Its a real issue and a real challenge in teaching biology.

Why did you agree to do this, and what was your driving force?

When you have worked in an academic setting for a period of time you come to understand that your role is not only the research you do on a day to day basis, but also try to instruct and to try to make a contribution where you can. In a way it becomes incumbent upon you to do so because you were taught by someone who was taught by someone else. It’s what we do.

How would other researchers interested in this sort of outreach go about connecting with school and teachers?

My understanding is All teachers try to have outside speakers and. it’s very much down to the initiative of the individual teachers to contact people and ask them to come in. In Boston, where you have top flight institutions and academics, teachers may think that researchers are simply too busy or uninterested, where I think the reverse is true It is possibly incumbent upon the schools themselves to contact universities and say “we are interested in what you do, could you come talk to us about it?” I think the schools have to make the first step.

Would you do it again?

Yes.

Research scientists have long been considered to be refractory to change, especially internet-flavored change. Ask any random researcher for a definition of a wiki, and I am willing to bet you will get either a blank stare or a long-winded explanation of the function of a really obscure protein. Lately, the gap between the majority of scientists and new web technology is growing narrower and narrower.

Research institutions and universities are slowly beginning to integrate new web tools, such as wikis, into everyday operations. Yale and Brown have wikis up and running for their research labs, and the word of their usefulness is spreading. The staff at the West Quad Computing Group at Harvard Medical School are happy to set up lab wikis for all those interested, and they even do house calls (or lab calls, as the case may be) for those labs still on the fence about the new technology – the Computing guys come to the lab to describe wikis, how they can be beneficial in a lab setting, and how researchers can use them in their daily work. My lab scheduled just such a lab visit. In just over an hour, the Computing guys described wiki basics and how they may be applied to lab life. The wiki offers collaborative writing tools with all versions of the document saved online and available for reversion at any time (just in case your collaborator decided to go rogue and re-interpret all the data). The long list of other lab wiki functionalities includes storing and discussing data, maintaining lab supply order lists, plasmid libraries, reagent catalogs, and even online lab notebooks.

And that’s where the webby guys hit an academic research wall. It turns out that Harvard, as well as many other research institutions, have specific guidelines for the maintenance of lab notebooks. Notebooks are to be kept on paper, in hard copy, on university premises. It’s ok to type your notes on the computer, as long as you print them out and store them, physically. The wiki alone currently does not comply with university standards for notebook keeping (I could not find this policy online, strangely enough, though my PI is certain of it). Although the wiki offers a one button export to PDF of most page contents – so hard copies of lab notebook contents can still be generated – the rule barring exclusively online storage seems strangely outdated.

When stored on a wiki, lab notebook contents are safe from fires, flood, pestilence, and all other plagues. The wiki server is backed up regularly, making loss of data highly unlikely, while a number of labs have lost years of work – stored on paper – through natural disaster (anyone recall Hurricane Katrina?). Wiki contents can be accessed from anywhere, reduce paper waste, increase data security… I could go on about the benefits, but that won’t change the fact that old rules cannot yet support the new technology.

Has anyone had experience with academic wikis in other institutions? Does anyone have details of official lab record keeping policies? How about personal experiences with lab wikis? My inner (ok, outer) web geek is screaming “cool!” but the researcher inside is slightly more restrained. Are wikis as useful a tool in the lab as they promise to be, rules and regulations aside?

The emergence and increased prominence of disciplines such as synthetic/systems biology has led to unprecedented integration and collaboration between scientific fields. One such integration led to the formation of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard. This inter-disciplinary research program brings together unanticipated combinations of scientists including astronomers, chemists, synthetic and molecular biologists, and geologists devoted to understanding the origins of life on earth.

The Origins of Life Initiative and the Harvard Alumi Association hosted a day long symposium at Harvard’s Science Center, entitled The Future of Life focused on discussing the progress made thus far in answering the most long-standing (and potentially philosophical) of all questions in science – what is life, and how did it begin?

This question is being attacked from all possible angles. Some researchers are taking the reductive and molecular approach by seeing how many genes they can subtract from a cell and still maintain life and replication. Others are seeing the minimal numbers of genes to add onto a blank canvas in order to generate life from scratch. Others still are taking the classical, natural history and geology approach in reading the history recorded in the Earth’s crust for hints of billion-year old events.

The keynote speaker (and visiting scientist with the Origins of Life Initiative), surely a familiar name to all life scientists, J. Craig Venter (he of the first human genome and ocean sampling fame) spoke of his recent discoveries on the diversity of life in the oceans. He and his sea-faring crew of scientists found ~85% unique genome sequence from organisms sampled at 200 mile intervals in the ocean, suggesting that the ocean is not a big bag of watery much as previously thought, but an ecosystem with discrete and contained microenvironments. Venter also described the struggles and triumphs of engineering artificial life, first in generating an artificial bacterial virus, PhiX, and then scaling the process up to make an artificial bacterial genome. In one of the coolest (though sadly, least in-depth) portions of his talk, Venter described a procedure in which his team injected a foreign complete genome into a bacterium. Restriction enzymes expressed by this new genome chewed up the host genome, effectively reprogramming the bacterium to the new genome’s specifications, turning it from one strain of bug into another. Fascinating, and a little scary.

Keynote speaker, J. Craig Venter

Jack Szostak demonstrated self-formation of lipid vesicles and their ability to enclose a self-assembled strand of RNA seeded on a clay particle, certainly reagents and environments present in primordial Earth. George Whitesides told of his lab’s attempts to mimic the chemical conditions of earth Earth and the chemical reactions which may have taken place. George Church gave an update on his lab’s progress toward generating artificial life, beginning with the construction of an artificial, self-replicating ribosome (a vitally important cell component responsible for translating RNA into protein). His lab has now demonstrated the reconstitution and function of a ribosome with an artificial ribosomal RNA. The eventual goals of this work include the generation of a bacterium with a minimal gene set of 151 genes that makes proteins to the scientists’ specifications – built of amino acid building blocks not found in nature (D-amino acids, for those chirally inclined), with the advantage of conferring multi-virus resistance on the clever little beasties.

Jack Szostak and George Church taking questions from the audience

It may be difficult to believe, but there was a common theme to this seeming cacophony of scientific expertise and discovery. The theme was, “We just don’t know.” No one knows how life began – or even how to define ‘life,’ if you want to get all philosophical about it – but it’s a question of such paramount interest and importance that key players in many avenues of scientific research are willing to devote their time and resources to answering it. Underneath it all, it was refreshing to hear a bunch of really smart folks say ‘we don’t know.’ It was humbling and put things in a grandiose perspective. No one knows how we all got to be here, but the researchers in the Origins of Life initiative and beyond are trying to find out.