The impact of structural genomics: the first quindecennial

The period 2000–2015 brought the advent of high-throughput approaches to protein structure determination. With the overall funding on the order of $2 billion (in 2010 dollars), the structural genomics (SG) consortia established worldwide have developed pipelines for target selection, protein production, sample preparation, crystallization, and structure determination by X-ray crystallography and NMR. These efforts resulted in the determination of over 13,500 protein structures, mostly from unique protein families, and increased the structural coverage of the expanding protein universe. SG programs contributed over 4400 publications to the scientific literature. The NIH-funded Protein Structure Initiatives alone have produced over 2000 scientific publications, which to date have attracted more than 93,000 citations. Software and database developments that were necessary to handle high-throughput structure determination workflows have led to structures of better quality and improved integrity of the associated data. Organized and accessible data have a positive impact on the reproducibility of scientific experiments. Most of the experimental data generated by the SG centers are freely available to the community and has been utilized by scientists in various fields of research. SG projects have created, improved, streamlined, and validated many protocols for protein production and crystallization, data collection, and functional analysis, significantly benefiting biological and biomedical research.     

AACR Annual Meeting 2008: autophagy in the forefront of cancer research

The 2008 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting was held in San Diego, CA, April 12-16, 2008 (http:// www.aacr.org/home/scientists/meetings--workshops/annual-meeting-2008.aspx). More than 17,000 scientists from 60 countries participated in this meeting that was organized by AACR, the oldest and largest organization in the world focused on cancer research. The scientific presentations included more than 6,000 abstracts and 500 invited talks on new and significant discoveries in basic, clinical, and translational cancer research. Autophagy, as pertaining to tumorigenesis and response to anticancer therapies, was undoubtedly a "hot topic" in this meeting. An educational session, a forum, a minisymposium and several other talks dispersed in different sessions had a strong focus on autophagy. All autophagy-related presentations were very well attended and stimulated lively discussions, clearly indicating that the scientific community is greatly interested in this rapidly-progressing area of research.     

中国神经科学十年进程

为了迎接21世纪的挑战,推动我国神经科学基础研究的快速发展,中国科学院于1999年底在上海成立了中国科学院神经科学研究所(下简称上海神经所).经过十余年的发展,上海神经所取得了突出的成就,跻身国际水平研究所行列,为我国神经科学发展做出了重要贡献。     

The first junior European Calcium Society meeting: calcium research across scales,Kingdoms and countries

The first junior European Calcium Society online meeting, held October 20–21, 2020, aimed to promote junior researchers in the Ca²⁺ community. The meeting included four scientific sessions, covering Ca²⁺ research from molecular detail to whole organisms. Each session featured one invited speaker and three speakers selected based on submitted abstracts, with the overall aim of actively involving early-career researchers. Consequently, the meeting underlined the diversity of Ca²⁺ physiology, by showcasing research across scales and Kingdoms, as presented by a correspondingly diverse speaker panel across career stages and countries. In this meeting report, we introduce the visions of the junior European Calcium Society board and summarize the meeting content.     

The United States of America and Scientific Research

To gauge the current commitment to scientific research in the United States of America (US), we compared federal research funding (FRF) with the US gross domestic product (GDP) and industry research spending during the past six decades. In order to address the recent globalization of scientific research, we also focused on four key indicators of research activities: research and development (R&D) funding, total science and engineering doctoral degrees, patents, and scientific publications. We compared these indicators across three major population and economic regions: the US, the European Union (EU) and the People''s Republic of China (China) over the past decade. We discovered a number of interesting trends with direct relevance for science policy. The level of US FRF has varied between 0.2% and 0.6% of the GDP during the last six decades. Since the 1960s, the US FRF contribution has fallen from twice that of industrial research funding to roughly equal. Also, in the last two decades, the portion of the US government R&D spending devoted to research has increased. Although well below the US and the EU in overall funding, the current growth rate for R&D funding in China greatly exceeds that of both. Finally, the EU currently produces more science and engineering doctoral graduates and scientific publications than the US in absolute terms, but not per capita. This study''s aim is to facilitate a serious discussion of key questions by the research community and federal policy makers. In particular, our results raise two questions with respect to: a) the increasing globalization of science: “What role is the US playing now, and what role will it play in the future of international science?”; and b) the ability to produce beneficial innovations for society: “How will the US continue to foster its strengths?”     

Life sciences and biotechnology in China

Life science and biotechnology have become a top priority in research and development in many countries as the world marches into the new century. China as a developing country with a 1.3 billion population and booming economy is actively meeting the challenge of a new era in this area of research. Owing to support from the government and the scientific community, and reform to improve the infrastructure, recent years have witnessed a rapid progress in some important fields of life science and biotechnology in China, such as genomics and protein sciences, neuroscience, systematics, super-hybrid rice research, stem cell and cloning technology, gene therapy and drug/vaccine development. The planned expansion and development of innovation in related sectors and the area of bioethics are described and discussed.     

Meeting report: fourth international congress of the Society for Melanoma Research

The 4th international melanoma congress of the Society for Melanoma Research (SMR), organized by Marianne Berwick (University of New Mexico), Paul Chapman (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center), Rene Gonzalez (University of Colorado) and Ze'ev Ronai (Burnham Institute), was held at the Marriott Hotel in downtown New York on November 2007. The congress was attended by a record high number of attendees (over 500 delegates) who joined to discuss recent advances in melanoma biology and therapy. About 40% of the participants arrived from 39 countries, a testament to the high impact of this annual gathering on the international melanoma community. Over 120 of the participants were students or postdoctoral fellows, representing a most impressive fraction of young scientists engaged in melanoma research. The meeting consisted of more than 50 plenary and minisymposia presentations, stimulating the exchange of unpublished data and novel ideas, and helping to forge new collaborations that are anticipated to facilitate significant advances in basic, translational and clinical melanoma research. Another major focus of this meeting was over 160 posters, which were heavily attended and provided an effective forum for extensive informal discussions. This report will highlight the major scientific themes and advances of this most successful meeting, and provide a useful perspective on the current state of melanoma research, as well as where the field should be heading.     

Stem cells in biology and disease - ESTOOLS International Symposium

ESTOOLS was the first EU-funded project entirely devoted to the study of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The final meeting of the consortium took place in Lisbon from 26 to 28 May 2010 and gathered 298 researchers from 27 countries. A dense programme of scientific sessions and outreach activities and an ethics workshop gave an all-round overview of the challenges, perspectives and ethical issues of this exciting field. The ESTOOLS consortium was launched in 2006 as a 4-year EU-funded 6th Framework (FP6) project, with a total funding of 12 million euro. The project has been the largest European consortium devoted to the study of human ESCs, teaming up 21 research groups in 10 countries. After the discovery of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) by Shinya Yamanaka and James Thomson in 2007, the consortium opened a new workpackage dedicated to this groundbreaking field, and became the first to devote EU funding to study human iPSCs. The Lisbon meeting marked the end of the consortiums funding cycle, but it was more than a wrap-up of its overall work and achievements, providing a showcase of cutting-edge research in human pluripotent stem cells, with the participation of international leaders in the field.     

Reflections on a giant of brain science

Walter J. Freeman was a giant of the field of neuroscience whose visionary work contributed various experimental and theoretical breakthroughs to brain research in the past 60 years. He has pioneered a number of Electroencephalogram and Electrocorticogram tools and approaches that shaped the field, while “Freeman Neurodynamics” is a theoretical concept that is widely known, used, and respected among neuroscientists all over the world. His recent death is a profound loss to neuroscience and biomedical engineering. Many of his revolutionary ideas on brain dynamics have been ahead of their time by decades. We summarize his following groundbreaking achievements: (1) Mass Action in the Nervous System, from microscopic (single cell) recordings, through mesoscopic populations, to large-scale collective brain patterns underlying cognition; (2) Freeman–Kachalsky model of multi-scale, modular brain dynamics; (3) cinematic theory of cognitive dynamics; (4) phase transitions in cortical dynamics modeled with random graphs and quantum field theory; (5) philosophical aspects of intentionality, consciousness, and the unity of brain–mind–body. His work has been admired by many of his neuroscientist colleagues and followers. At the same time, his multidisciplinary approach combining advanced concepts of control theory and the mathematics of nonlinear systems and chaos, poses significant challenges to those who wish to thoroughly understand his message. The goal of this commemorative paper is to review key aspects of Freeman’s neurodynamics and to provide some handles to gain better understanding about Freeman’s extraordinary intellectual achievement.     

Reliability of a structured method of selecting abstracts for a plastic surgical scientific meeting

There is no generally accepted method for assessing abstracts that are submitted for a medical scientific meeting. This article describes the development and prospective evaluation of such a method applied to the 220 abstracts submitted for the 2000 Annual Meeting of the European Association of Plastic Surgeons. Structured abstracts were evaluated in three categories: aesthetic surgery, basic research, and clinical study. Each anonymous abstract was assessed separately by 10 reputable European plastic surgeons. These reviewers used a structured rating questionnaire which resulted in a score given by each reviewer to each abstract between -6 and +6. The scores of all 10 reviewers were added for each abstract, and the papers were accepted in each of the three categories on the basis of this abridged score. To evaluate the reliability of this structured method of selection, the interrater agreement among the reviewers was tested by means of kappa analysis and the Cronbach alpha coefficient. The kappa values for agreement among reviewers regarding acceptability of abstracts were low, but the alpha coefficient indicated an acceptable degree of reliability of the average reviewers' ratings for all categories. Using a structured questionnaire can be helpful in the objective assessment of abstracts for a scientific meeting and may facilitate comparison of abstracts. Meritocratic dichotomy of abstracts by the reviewers is advocated to further improve reliability of the rating. Even though reliability generally increases with the number of reviewers, the annual increase of submitted abstracts may necessitate a decrease in the number of reviewers for each abstract.     

The joint cardiovascular research profile of the university medical centres in the Netherlands

Biomedical scientific research in the Netherlands has a good reputation worldwide. Quantitatively, the university medical centres (UMCs) deliver about 40?% of the total number of scientific publications of this research. Analysis of the bibliometric output data of the UMCs shows that their research is highly cited. These output-based analyses also indicate the high impact of cardiovascular scientific research in these centres, illustrating the strength of this research in the Netherlands. A set of six joint national cardiovascular research topics selected by the UMCs can be recognised. At the top are heart failure, rhythm disorder research and atherosclerosis. National collaboration of top scientists in consortia in these three areas is successful in acquiring funding of large-scale programs. Our observations suggest that funding national consortia of experts focused on a few selected research topics may increase the international competitiveness of cardiovascular research in the Netherlands.     

Neurotree: A Collaborative,Graphical Database of the Academic Genealogy of Neuroscience

Neurotree is an online database that documents the lineage of academic mentorship in neuroscience. Modeled on the tree format typically used to describe biological genealogies, the Neurotree web site provides a concise summary of the intellectual history of neuroscience and relationships between individuals in the current neuroscience community. The contents of the database are entirely crowd-sourced: any internet user can add information about researchers and the connections between them. As of July 2012, Neurotree has collected information from 10,000 users about 35,000 researchers and 50,000 mentor relationships, and continues to grow. The present report serves to highlight the utility of Neurotree as a resource for academic research and to summarize some basic analysis of its data. The tree structure of the database permits a variety of graphical analyses. We find that the connectivity and graphical distance between researchers entered into Neurotree early has stabilized and thus appears to be mostly complete. The connectivity of more recent entries continues to mature. A ranking of researcher fecundity based on their mentorship reveals a sustained period of influential researchers from 1850–1950, with the most influential individuals active at the later end of that period. Finally, a clustering analysis reveals that some subfields of neuroscience are reflected in tightly interconnected mentor-trainee groups.     

Recent advances in basic neurosciences and brain disease: from synapses to behavior

Understanding basic neuronal mechanisms hold the hope for future treatment of brain disease. The 1st international conference on synapse, memory, drug addiction and pain was held in beautiful downtown Toronto, Canada on August 21–23, 2006. Unlike other traditional conferences, this new meeting focused on three major aims: (1) to promote new and cutting edge research in neuroscience; (2) to encourage international information exchange and scientific collaborations; and (3) to provide a platform for active scientists to discuss new findings. Up to 64 investigators presented their recent discoveries, from basic synaptic mechanisms to genes related to human brain disease. This meeting was in part sponsored by Molecular Pain, together with University of Toronto (Faculty of Medicine, Department of Physiology as well as Center for the Study of Pain). Our goal for this meeting is to promote future active scientific collaborations and improve human health through fundamental basic neuroscience researches. The second international meeting on Neurons and Brain Disease will be held in Toronto (August 29–31, 2007).     

Standard Operating Procedures,ethical and legal regulations in BTB (Brain/Tissue/Bio) banking: what is still missing?

The use of human biological specimens in scientific research is the focus of current international public and professional concern and a major issue in bioethics in general. Brain/Tissue/Bio banks (BTB-banks) are a rapid developing sector; each of these banks acts locally as a steering unit for the establishment of the local Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the legal regulations and ethical guidelines to be followed in the procurement and dissemination of research specimens. An appropriat Code of Conduct is crucial to a successful operation of the banks and the research application they handle. What are we still missing ? (1) Adequate funding for research BTB-banks. (2) Standard evaluation protocls for audit of BTB-bank performance. (3) Internationally accepted SOP’s which will facilitate exchange and sharing of specimens and data with the scientific community. (4) Internationally accepted Code of Conduct. In the present paper we review the most pressing organizational, methodological, medico-legal and ethical issues involved in BTB-banking; funding, auditing, procurement, management/handling, dissemination and sharing of specimens, confidentiality and data protection, genetic testing, “financial gain” and safety measures. Taking into consideration the huge variety of the specimens stored in different repositories and the enormous differences in medico-legal systems and ethics regulations in different countries it is strongly recommend that the health-care systems and institutions who host BTB-Banks will put more efforts in getting adequate funding for the infrastructure and daily activities. The BTB-banks should define evaluation protocols, SOPs and their Code of Conduct. This in turn will enable the banks to share the collected specimens and data with the largest possible number of researchers and aim at a maximal scientific spin-off and advance in public health research.     

Standard Operating Procedures,ethical and legal regulations in BTB (Brain/Tissue/Bio) banking: what is still missing?

The use of human biological specimens in scientific research is the focus of current international public and professional concern and a major issue in bioethics in general. Brain/Tissue/Bio banks (BTB-banks) are a rapid developing sector; each of these banks acts locally as a steering unit for the establishment of the local Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the legal regulations and ethical guidelines to be followed in the procurement and dissemination of research specimens. An appropriat Code of Conduct is crucial to a successful operation of the banks and the research application they handle. What are we still missing ? (1) Adequate funding for research BTB-banks. (2) Standard evaluation protocls for audit of BTB-bank performance. (3) Internationally accepted SOP’s which will facilitate exchange and sharing of specimens and data with the scientific community. (4) Internationally accepted Code of Conduct. In the present paper we review the most pressing organizational, methodological, medico-legal and ethical issues involved in BTB-banking; funding, auditing, procurement, management/handling, dissemination and sharing of specimens, confidentiality and data protection, genetic testing, “financial gain” and safety measures. Taking into consideration the huge variety of the specimens stored in different repositories and the enormous differences in medico-legal systems and ethics regulations in different countries it is strongly recommend that the health-care systems and institutions who host BTB-Banks will put more efforts in getting adequate funding for the infrastructure and daily activities. The BTB-banks should define evaluation protocols, SOPs and their Code of Conduct. This in turn will enable the banks to share the collected specimens and data with the largest possible number of researchers and aim at a maximal scientific spin-off and advance in public health research.     

分享科学，创造梦——美国第43届神经科学年会参会感

美国第43届神经科学年会于2013年11月9－13日在美国圣迭戈召开。本文根据作者的参会经历,对此次会议的概况、规模,以及内容作一简介,以期让读者了解神经科学这一研究领域的前沿以及美国神经科学年会的概况。     

Connecting neuroscience and law: anticipatory discourse and the role of sociotechnical imaginaries

In recent years, attempts have increasingly been made to connect neuroscience and law. Scientists and lawyers are imagining and actively fostering the realization of futures in which neuroscience will play a prominent role in the activity of courts. In this article I take these debates as my empirical object. I trace the emergence of neurolegal discourse, explore its focus on free will and lie detection, and show how expectations about the potential role neuroscience might play in the law are being embedded in new research programs and funding streams. In so doing, I analyze the role of particular “sociotechnical imaginaries” in stimulating, directing and restricting neurolegal discourse and highlight the ways in which new visions of law, science and scientists are produced in the process. Sociotechnical imaginaries are shown to be salient in structuring anticipatory discourse, and represent a key target for social scientific intervention in such debates.     

Examination of two years of community dynamics in an anaerobic bioreactor using fluorescence polymerase chain reaction (PCR) single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis

The structures of the bacterial and archaeal communities in an anaerobic digester were monitored over a 2 year period. The study was performed on a fluidized bed reactor fed with vinasse. The objective was to characterize the population dynamics over a long time period under constant environmental parameters. Total bacterial and archaeal populations were measured independently by fluorescence-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis using an automated DNA sequencer. With the current level of accuracy, the technique was able to monitor 45 bacterial and seven archaeal 16S rDNA molecules. The community dynamics were compared with molecular inventories of the microbial community based on 16S rDNA sequences done at the beginning of the study. The six archaeal and the 22 most frequent bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) identified were associated with their SSCP peak counterparts. Overall, the data indicated that, throughout the period of the study, rapid significant shifts in the species composition of the bacterial community occurred, whereas the archaeal community remained relatively stable.     

Water,Water, Everywhere: Defining and Assessing Data Sharing in Academia

Sharing of research data has begun to gain traction in many areas of the sciences in the past few years because of changing expectations from the scientific community, funding agencies, and academic journals. National Science Foundation (NSF) requirements for a data management plan (DMP) went into effect in 2011, with the intent of facilitating the dissemination and sharing of research results. Many projects that were funded during 2011 and 2012 should now have implemented the elements of the data management plans required for their grant proposals. In this paper we define ‘data sharing’ and present a protocol for assessing whether data have been shared and how effective the sharing was. We then evaluate the data sharing practices of researchers funded by the NSF at Oregon State University in two ways: by attempting to discover project-level research data using the associated DMP as a starting point, and by examining data sharing associated with journal articles that acknowledge NSF support. Sharing at both the project level and the journal article level was not carried out in the majority of cases, and when sharing was accomplished, the shared data were often of questionable usability due to access, documentation, and formatting issues. We close the article by offering recommendations for how data producers, journal publishers, data repositories, and funding agencies can facilitate the process of sharing data in a meaningful way.