Establishing an environment in which rigorous scientific inquiry is practiced: a personal journey

For more than three decades, Ionis Pharmaceutics has pursued the challenging mission of creating a new platform for drug discovery. To overcome the numerous challenges faced required the integration of innovation across many scientific areas, despite many disappointments and failures. The approaches implemented to create and maintain a scientific environment to achieve the mission demanded the rigorous practice of science over three decades. The approaches taken are discussed in this perspective.     

Quantifying the impact and relevance of scientific research

Qualitative and quantitative methods are being developed to measure the impacts of research on society, but they suffer from serious drawbacks associated with linking a piece of research to its subsequent impacts. We have developed a method to derive impact scores for individual research publications according to their contribution to answering questions of quantified importance to end users of research. To demonstrate the approach, here we evaluate the impacts of research into means of conserving wild bee populations in the UK. For published papers, there is a weak positive correlation between our impact score and the impact factor of the journal. The process identifies publications that provide high quality evidence relating to issues of strong concern. It can also be used to set future research agendas.     

我的科研和科研管理生涯

陆如山教授为中国医学科学院医学信息所名誉所长、卫生部国际卫生咨询委员会副主任、中华医学会医学信息学分会顾问,曾致力创建我国的放射医学研究基地,担任医学科学院放射医学研究所所长。在任世界卫生组织（WHO）助理总干事时,为国际卫生事业作出了重要贡献。他曾作为我国医学信息工作的牵头人,指导和协调全国医学信息工作,积极组建并参与中国医学信息网络和中文生物医学文献库等医学信息领域的基础建设,在放射医学和医学信息学方面发表论文近百篇。陆教授服从大局,敢为人先的精神,值得我们学习。[编者按]     

Insects had it first: surfactants as a defence against predators

Insects have evolved an astonishing array of defences to ward off enemies. Well known and widespread is the regurgitation of oral secretion (OS), fluid that repels attacking predators. In herbivores, the effectiveness of OS has been ascribed so far to the presence of deterrent secondary metabolites sequestered from the host plant. This notion implies, however, that generalists experience less protection on plants with low amounts of secondary metabolites or with compounds ineffective against potential enemies. Resolving the dilemma, we describe a novel defence mechanism that is independent of deterrents as it relies on the intrinsic detergent properties of the OS. The OS of Spodoptera exigua (and other species) was found to be highly amphiphilic and well capable of wetting the hydrophobic cuticle of predatory ants. As a result, affected ants stopped attacking and engaged in extensive cleansing. The presence of surfactants was sufficient to explain the defensive character of herbivore OS. We hypothesize that detergency is a common but unrecognized mode of defence, which provides a base level of protection that may or may not be further enhanced by plant-derived deterrents. Our study also proves that insects 'invented' the use of defensive surfactants long before modern agriculture had started applying them as insecticides.     

科教生涯五十年的人生感悟

赵荣瑞教授是我国著名生理学家,他致力于心血管生理与病理生理学研究,注重基础理论与临床实际相结合,取得科研成果与人才培养双丰收的业绩。即使在条件十分有限的情况下,仍通过自身努力,艰苦奋斗,做出了自己的贡献。赵教授执著敬业,自强不息,善于团结协作的精神,值得效法。     

Perspective: Time scales in scientific research with an emphasis on microbial cellular and molecular research

Scientists use time to describe and research the universe in which humans live. Geologists and evolutionary biologists often use time scales in the millions to billions of years while biochemists and molecular biologists use time scales in the milliseconds or less. The atom smashers use time scales that are almost the speed of light. However, in some areas of research such as molecular-based activities in cells, it is very challenging to obtain data sets in molecular time scales. This has been a challenge to obtaining accurate and precise measurements at the cell and molecular levels of organization in living organisms. Measurements of specific cellular and molecular activities are often made over time scales longer than the actual molecular events. The data sets obtained become estimates over seconds, minutes and hours and not measurements over milli- and nanoseconds. The question can then be posed — how representative and accurate are our data sets when the time scales are not synchronized with the actual living events? In this article, the role of time scales in scientific research and our understanding of living microorganisms are examined with an emphasis on cell and molecular time scales.     

The doppel gene biology: a scientific journey from brain to testis, and return

Doppel is a newly recognized prion-like molecule encoded by a novel gene locus, PRND, located on the same chromosomal region of the prion (PRNP) coding gene. Doppel was considered a paralogue and the first member of the prion-gene family, possibly originated through an ancestral gene duplication event. Prion and doppel have different expression patterns, suggesting that the gene products exhibit different biological functions. Actually, doppel is not involved in the aetiology of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) or “prion diseases” and is highly expressed only within the testicular tissue, suggesting an important physiological role in the process of spermatogenesis. The restricted spatial and temporal expression profile of doppel has suggested its investigation within particular pathological contexts, such as cancers, showing that it might represent a novel and attractive diagnostic molecular marker and that might provide insights into the regulatory pathways of tumor-cell transformation.