In the September issue of Nature Chemical Biology, John Silvius wrote about McGill University’s interdepartmental graduate program in chemical biology, which was established in 2002 and now has “roughly 30 graduate students, 10 postdoctoral fellows and 30 ”https://www.mcgill.ca/biochemistry/chemicalbiology/mentors/“>faculty mentors.”

The program involves scientists from the Department of Biochemistry, the Department of Chemistry, and the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and a “key objective of the program is to maximize opportunities for students with chemistry and life science backgrounds to share and appreciate their sometimes distinct perspectives on the field of chemical biology.” Silvius wrote that this is accomplished via seminar discussion meetings, workshops, and an “annual research symposium at which students present their work to other students and faculty mentors.”

There are other interdepartmental and multi-institutional graduate programs in chemical biology: for example, there is the Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional Training Program in Chemical Biology in New York City (which involves Cornell University, The Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the Weill Medical College of Cornell). Graduate students in the Tri-Institutional Training Program can rotate in (and join) laboratories at any of the institutions and they do not have to teach classes, “”https://www.triiprograms.org/tpcb/course_of_study.html">enabling them to take an accelerated course schedule (four courses per semester during the first year)." (Although I understand that the program was designed so the students could take a large number of classes, I really enjoyed teaching during graduate school and think it’s an important experience for all graduate students. But I’ll save that topic for another blog post…)

There’s obviously more than one way to train the next generation of chemical biologists, but Silvius believes that

An effective training program in chemical biology must produce graduates who have a distinct sense of intellectual identity yet can work effectively with researchers that are more conventionally trained either in chemistry or in the life sciences alone… Moreover, by promoting constant intermixing of individuals trained in the cultures of chemistry and biology, such a program allows students to be participants in the very type of stimulating, creative ferment that drives the field of chemical biology itself.

If you are a graduate student in (or a recent graduate of) an interdepartmental or multi-institutional graduate program in chemical biology, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about your program/your experiences. Why did you choose an interdepartmental or multi-institutional graduate program, instead of a Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology? (And for those of you who did their graduate work in a Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, why didn’t you choose an interdepartmental or multi-institutional graduate program?) For those of you working on the interface of other disciplines (for example, biophysics, chemical physics, bionanotechnology, etc.) did your graduate program meet your (scientific) needs/expectations? If not, what could they have done to make it easier for you to pursue interdisciplinary research?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

You might remember endosymbiotic theory from your high school or college biology classes: it’s the idea that some organelles (for example, mitochondria and chloroplasts) were originally separate prokaryotic organisms that were engulfed by eukaryotic cells. Although it’s not clear how or why this occurred, this became a mutually beneficial relationship for both cells (i.e., a symbiotic relationship), resulting in the organelle-containing cells that appear in biology textbooks (and in our bodies…)

But why – you might ask – would a chemist care about endosymbionts (organisms that live inside other organisms)? Well I think they’re interesting because “”https://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/46/16222">[b]acterial symbionts have long been suspected to be the true producers of many drug candidates" isolated from natural sources. For example, there is some evidence that the antitumor polyketides of the pederin family are produced by an uncultured bacterial symbiont of Paederus beetles, which can cause dermatitis.

Late last year, Partida-Martinez & Hertweck discovered that another natural product (rhizoxin) is not biosynthesized by the fungus Rhizopus microsporus itself, but by a bacteria that lives inside the fungus. In a follow-up paper in JACS, these authors were able to isolate a rhizoxin-producing bacterial strain from the fungus (“Burkholderia rhizoxina”) and could grow it in liquid culture. They lysed the cells, and found (quite surprisingly) that “about 40% of the crude extract is composed of rhizoxin derivatives” – in addition to rhizoxin, Burkholderia rhizoxina produces a number of related structures.

The authors determined that some of these natural products were 1,000 to 10,000 times more active than rhizoxin in cell-based assays (the assay was looking at antiproliferative activity). Rhizoxin went through extensive clinical trials in the 1990s and showed some promise as an anti-cancer drug, though it was not taken into Phase III clinical trials because it was not active enough in vivo. These authors hope that, since the derivatives they isolated are more active in vitro, they might more successful in the clinic. And since the natural products can be harvested from bacterial cultures, it may be possible to rapidly produce a large amount of these complex natural products without having to resort to chemical synthesis.

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I took a look at Wikipedia’s ‘List of Chemists’: all the Nobel laureates have entries (for example, EJ Corey, Barry Sharpless, Ahmed Zewail, etc.) and though the top of the page boldly claims ‘This is a list of famous chemists: (alphabetcal [sic] order),’ this is by no means a fleshed out list of ‘important’ chemists: Margaret Thatcher is on the list, but George Whitesides didn’t make the cut for some reason. (I don’t mean any disrespect to the former Prime Minister, but I don’t think many scientists think ‘oh yeah, she’s a chemist’ when they hear her name…)

Whether you like it or not, Wikipedia has become the first place many people look to find information (online). But the information on chemists isn’t up to snuff: as I mentioned, George Whitesides has an entry, but a number of other respected chemists in the same chemistry department don’t appear in Wikipedia (for example, Eric Jacobsen, Andrew Myers, Eugene Shakhnovich, and David Liu, just to name a few…)

So I had a thought – let’s flesh these Wikipedia entries out…

If you have time in the next week, add an entry for your Ph.D./post-doc supervisor, one of your co-workers (if you’re a professor), or someone whose work you’ve enjoyed reading for years. If they already have an entry, add some (truthful) information to it… And if you add their names to the ‘List of Chemists,’ don’t forget to put them in ‘alphabetcal’ order…

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

A few nights ago I was talking with my wife about fame (i.e., what makes someone a ‘superstar’) – it’s pretty easy to understand why so many actors/actresses, musicians, and writers are household names (whether or not you like Ben Affleck or Shakira, many people know who they are…) The average person might not be able to name a living artist or dancer, though I bet a number of people would say “”https://www.christojeanneclaude.net/“>Christo and Jeanne-Claude” and “”https://www.baryshnikovdancefoundation.org/“>Baryshnikov”…

But if you asked the average person to name a famous living chemist, I wonder if they could name anyone… (This is probably not true in Japan, since Nobel laureates have a unique “”https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040119/full/427282a.html">celebrity status," but in most other countries I wonder what the average person would say…)

So the million dollar question is can anything be done about this? (A related question is should anything be done about this, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that something should be done about this…) Movies are certainly the easiest way to inform the general public: Awakenings, A Beautiful Mind, and Kinsey helped popularize the names “”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sachs">Oliver Sacks," “”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash">John Nash," and “”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey">Alfred Kinsey."

So do we need a movie about Barry Sharpless? Or, as someone suggested on “In the Pipeline,” should The Billion Dollar Molecule be made into a movie? I don’t know about you, but I’d watch a movie about RB Woodward – from all the stories I’ve heard, he sounded like an interesting guy…

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)