european molecular biology lab gets under way
TRANSCRIPT
Science
European molecular biology lab gets under way Funded by 10 countries,
$7 million Heidelberg
facility will be focal
point for global research,
meetings, and training
In the hills overlooking the picturesque West German university town of Heidelberg, an intensive building program is just getting under way. In coming months, the outline of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory will take shape, carved out of virgin forest. If all goes according to plan, completion is set for 1977.
The lab has been a long time in coming about. In fact, its creation has been uppermost in the mind of its director general, Nobel Laureate Sir John Kendrew, since he and a group of prominent fellow molecular biologists decided to set up the European Molecular Biology Organization 12 years ago.
Governments of 10 countries—Austria, Denmark, France, West Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.—are collaborating in funding the $7 million facility and contributing toward its annual budget of some $5.5 million. When fully operating, it will be an important focal point for international research in molecular biology as well as a location for conducting conferences, summer courses, and training programs.
In many respects the organization and running of the lab will follow closely the pattern of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. For example, the amount that each member country contributes toward the lab's annual budget is directly keyed to its gross national product. In the early days of planning the facility, Sir John and his associates met frequently with Dr. Victor Weis-kopf, CERN's director general at the time before he moved back to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They were influenced greatly by his advice.
The lab will be equipped to carry out fundamental research on various aspects of cell biology. But another important thrust of its activities will be directed toward developing novel, sophisticated instrumentation to aid molecular biologists in their work.
"We plan to be nearly half instrumentation, which is a quite unusual balance," Sir John comments. For ex
ample, a major instrumentation development will center on the use of scanning transmission of electron microscopy for studying chromosomes, cell membranes, and the like.
In addition to the Heidelberg campus, the facility has two satellite laboratories. One is at Hamburg's Deutsch-es Elektronen-Synchroton (DESY) facility. The other is at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France, site of a high-flux neutron source somewhat similar to that at Long Island's Brookhaven National Laboratory. Equipment will be available at Hamburg and Grenoble to permit biochemists to prepare their samples, many of which are extremely labile, just prior to scattering analysis.
The DESY machine, by causing electrons to travel in circles, generates x-ray beams that are much more intense than are those available from other sources.
"This is particularly interesting for molecular biologists," Sir John points out, "because one of the main methods of establishing structures of biological specimens is by x-ray diffraction. The pictures we are taking now at DESY are at least an order of magnitude quicker than can be obtained from an ordinary x-ray source. Eventually, we hope to get down to the millisecond range of exposure time. If this can be achieved, it will mean that we will be able to study a muscle fiber in motion, something that can't be done now.
"For this development, a great deal of instrumentation will be needed," Sir John explains. "The techniques are quite unconventional. Everything has to be done by remote control because radiation levels are so high. We will have to design all the equipment from nothing." The neutron diffraction studies at Grenoble will complement the x-ray work.
The Heidelberg complex eventually
Sir John: nearly half instrumentation
will have a full-time scientific staff of about 60. The few already recruited are working in space provided by the neighboring Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics and the German Cancer Research Institute, and by Heidelberg University. Since the lab is being paid for by the 10 governments, a large proportion of the staff will be recruited from those countries. But nationals of nonmember states also will be invited to join.
By next year, scientists from Australia, Finland, and the U.S. will be among the full-time staff members. In January, Dr. Donald Caspar of Bran-deis University begins a three-year term on the lab's scientific advisory committee.
The Heidelberg lab, as well as those in Grenoble and Hamburg, will undertake its own basic research projects. "You can't provide a decent service to others unless you have a pretty strong in-house research program of your own," Sir John reasons.
Already, several lines of research are emerging at the Heidelberg lab. There are projects centering on the structure and function of muscle and the determination of complex biological structures, such as those of cell membranes and viruses.
"We don't want to repeat what is being done by everyone else," Sir John observes. "My own field of research, for example, has been the determination of protein structures. We aren't going into that because so many are doing it nowadays. Similarly on the cell biology side, most work currently is based on Escherichia coli and the bacteriophages which interact with it. We tend to keep off E. coli and to think more about animal cells.
The overriding philosophy at the lab will be to do things which national laboratories either can't do or find difficult to do, Sir John adds. "We are not competing with the national labs. Rather, we are trying to provide a service."
The possibility of embarking on research in genetic engineering will come up for discussion next month. "Some of our smaller member countries don't have facilities for this type of work and have asked whether we might provide them in Heidelberg," Sir John notes. "If we do, they would be there mainly for visitors to come and work. And we would certainly have on our staff an expert in the safety aspects of such experiments."
DermotA. 0'Sullivan, C&ENLondon
18 C&EN Oct. 20, 1975