Few things in my professional life have filled me with as much fear as a recent invitation to speak at a symposium at Cold Spring Harbor Labs - the Mecca of American genetics. The occasion was a gathering of geneticists - including most of the architects of the human genome project - brought together to share research on human genetic variation and the genetic basis of human disease processes. I was one of a handful of paleoanthropologists, scientists who study the fossil record of human evolution, invited to speak.
On the flight to Long Island, I questioned the wisdom in accepting the invitation; my feelings cycled between a nagging dread and a morbid wish for a midair mechanical failure. My trepidation stemmed from more than the thought of making conversation with molecular geneticists or being a "white-knuckle" public speaker - it came mainly from uncertainty and insecurity: What could I possibly have to say that would be relevant, or of interest, to a large auditorium of some of the world's pre-eminent geneticists?
My fear of the Cold Spring Harbor talk was simply an acute episode of a more chronic malaise that has gripped me since coming to Duke eight years ago. While I love this University and have always been enormously happy here, I have always felt out of place at Duke. I am a scientist whose work is conducted amidst the dusty boxes and wooden cabinets in the backrooms of provincial museums across Europe and whose subjects of study come from scratching in the dirt of caves and rock shelters on distant continents. Even though my field is dynamic and rapidly changing - the number of known species in the human family has more than doubled in the last 15 years - its basic questions and approaches haven't changed much over the last century. Duke, on the other hand, is a research institution known for bringing the newest of technology, for using the latest methods and for applying the most promising new approaches to push the frontiers of biomedical science. Duke is progressive and forward-looking, very much a 21st century University; I am the keeper of an arcane and backward-looking, 19th century science. I often feel like an alchemist at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.
These feelings of discord have certainly been heightened by recent discussions among administrators and faculty about the future of my department, Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, and its role in the intellectual and research life of Duke. My sense of anomie is so acute that even I've been wondering: Does Duke need BAA?
Biological anthropologists are organismal biologists - scientists who study the whole organism rather than the cells or molecules therein - but with a twist: We concentrate solely on humans and our primate relatives. This human focus makes us distinct from biology and puts us, intellectually, somewhere between the natural and social sciences. Our concentration on the functional aspects of primate biology - behavior, physiology and biomechanics - placed us firmly within Duke's strong tradition of outstanding scholarship in functional organismal biology established by the Biology Department; but the trend towards molecular and cellular biology is draining resources for our type of scholarship at Duke and at other universities.
My world of fossil bones and calipers collided with the world of chromosomes and gene sequencers at Cold Spring Harbor. I expected to be confronted with the attitude - prevalent since the first molecular studies were applied to questions of human evolution in the 1960s-that fossils and whole organisms were superfluous and that everything we needed to know about humans could be found by decoding the nucleotide sequences of the double helix.
But the buzz was quite the opposite. The first draft of the human genome had been released, the rate of discovering new gene sequences had plummeted, the prospect of molecular tests for human diseases had gone largely unrealized and genomics had lost many of its top researchers to drug discovery, personalized medicine, proteomics and other ventures. Welcome to the post-genomic era.
At Cold Spring Harbor the buzz was all about integrative biology - the synthesis of functional organismal biology with genomics research - as reflected in the emergence of new areas of study like functional genomics and physiological genomics. "We are seeing a resurgence of functional organismal research," one colleague told me, "as geneticists are scrambling to make sense of the mountains of data that have been collected in the absence of research questions." I was astonished to see the genuine interest the participants had in human evolutionary studies - not only because fossil evidence is critical to their efforts to understand how ancient human migrations effect modern genetic variation but also because of the growing realization that genomics has as much potential to tell us about the human past as it does to shape the human future.
In fact, Duke has the ability to play a critical role in how biological anthropology and genomics can together shape the future through many of the unique animals found at the Primate Center. The human genome project was initially aimed at providing the data and methodologies needed to identify the genetic basis of common diseases, which in turn stimulated the sequencing of animal models without real thought to the appropriateness of these models for understanding human disease. Unfortunately, many of these models have not proved successful at mirroring human disease processes. It doesn't take a degree in biology to see that primates are the best models for understanding human disease processes. The prosimian primates housed at the Duke Primate Center may prove to be excellent for the study of human physiology or pathology.
One relevant animal for studying human physiology, the mouse lemur, a diminutive nocturnal primate from Madagascar, is a resident of the Primate Center. The mouse lemur, like humans, is a long-lived primate. (It kicks off after only 10 years or so, but for a mouse-sized animal this is life span of biblical proportions.) But the most interesting thing about this prosimian is how it responds to aging: Like humans, it grows senile. Examination of the brains of aged mouse lemurs reveals the formation of the plaques and tangles that characterize the brains of human Alzheimer's patients. While it would be difficult to follow the neurological changes of aging in human subjects (since microimaging studies would need to be performed on a frequent basis), such studies would be easier with the mouse lemur. With this model, anecdotal reports from clinical case studies - for example, the claim that an aspirin a day may retard the progress of Alzheimer's - could be readily tested. Mouse lemurs are not endangered, they breed rapidly and the aging process occurs over the span of one decade rather than the seven or eight decades of humans. On top of all this, there is research demonstrating that the life span of mouse lemurs can be altered by changing the length of their day - potentially leading to valuable insight about metabolism and the aging process.
As I returned to Duke from Cold Spring Harbor, I had a renewed appreciation for the interconnectedness of all forms of science and optimism about the future of functional organismal studies in a post-genomic world. Moreover, I came away with a renewed sense of the importance of pure science in a world that seems to increasingly value the applied sciences. The downsizing of the pure sciences - a national trend that is being played out here at Duke - is shortsighted at best.
While I have tried to illustrate the important role that the traditional science fields play in newer, applied science venues, I want to make clear that the value of the pure sciences goes well beyond their adaptability. The generation of knowledge and the forging of that knowledge into wisdom through consideration of the natural, social, political and ethical realms of human existence is the birthright of the University. This, along with the critical role of educating successive generations in all areas of human endeavor, is its only real mandate from society. Universities, as centers of intellectual diversity, are the last bastions of the pure sciences. Things like BAA, the Primate Center and functional organismal biology are what set Duke apart from for-profit applied science corporations, and continuing to support these ventures while integrating them with new areas of research will only foster a stronger intellectual environment. Now I see the real question: Can Duke live without BAA?
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