STICKY WICKET
2205
An occasional column, in which
Caveman and other troglodytes
involved in cell science emerge
to share their views on various
aspects of life-science
research. Messages for
Caveman and other
contributors can be left at
[email protected].
Any correspondence may be
published in forthcoming
issues.
Life in the Stone Age
As a caveman, it sounds a little
redundant to say “I live in the Stone
Age”, but that’s how I feel. I have lived
in the same cave for the past decade or
more, and soot and sundry animal parts
now obscure the brilliant cave art that
used to cover the walls. I still use flints
and damp moss to start a fire (try it on a
windy day), clubs and stones to hunt
animals only just bigger than me (and I
am usually not very successful), and
bare hands to dig for roots (ouch, there
goes another fingernail). I also spend a
considerable
amount
of
time
communicating in grunts and groans, by
sign language and with drawings to help
our younger clan members learn about
life as a caveperson. I am usually quite
content with my lot, until I look around
and see what some of the other clans are
doing. They are using the latest gadgets:
Duraflame logs for fires, heat-seeking
missiles fired from the comfort of their
caves to bring down animals 20 times
bigger than them, and quadruped-drawn
cultivators to plant, grow and harvest a
wide variety of crops. They all seem to
be young adults who developed their
initial skills in clans like mine. There
appears to be little or no requirement for
them to get involved in training. As a
consequence they become extremely
efficient hunter-gathers. What is
particularly irksome is that their rate of
evolution is considerably faster than
mine.
Yep, my lab a decade or more ago was
pretty spiffy. The cabinets were
gleaming,
the
bench-tops
were
unblemished, the floor shone, and the
equipment was brand-new and, most
importantly, worked(!). After a decade
of work by 2-3 dozen postdocs and
graduate students, the cabinets are
succumbing to the rigors of being
wrenched open and slammed shut and
crammed with oversized items. The
bench-tops have seen one too many
Coomassie Blue spills and are covered
by an assortment of flasks and bottles,
some of which are rather dusty and
contain strange organic growths. The
floors reveal the passage of many dirty
sneakers, the remnants of acid and
solvent spills, and a Plexiglas-covered
area where some radioactivity was
accidentally dropped several years ago!
The once new and working equipment
has either stopped working altogether or
has been through one more ‘band-aid’
repair, and it is definitely not state-of-
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JOURNAL OF CELL SCIENCE 114 (12)
the-art. But, we muddle through OK.
The PCR machine works fine (if you
light the incense stick, wear the necklace
of colored test-tubes and chant the
special incantation); the tissue-culture
hoods are sterile if you spray the surface
with 70% propanol, and the incubators
hold at 37°C and 5% CO2 in air; the
bands on gels are still tight, and our
antibodies are as specific as they were on
the day we made them; and, we have
enough computer power to reposition
satellites. We continue to teach students
with methods that have not changed
much, overheads and chalkboards;
personally, I do not like to use
Powerpoint for teaching, although
computers are useful for showing
movies.
So what type of lab do I juxtapose
against mine that makes me feel that I
live in the Stone Age? No, not that of a
new investigator, nor of someone who
belongs to the Howard Hughes,
Wellcome Fund or Max Planck (in time
their labs will look like mine). No, I am
talking about industry, biotech. This is
where new gleaming labs are being built,
architect designed to look impressive
and to be functional. Here, there is no
need to placate the Trustees by
designing an edifice to fit to the style of
the surrounding gothic buildings that
were hand crafted a century ago. No
need to maximize space within labs
(how many benches can you crunch into
an 800-square-foot room) or to design
one-style-fits-all space. Here is where
you’ll find state-of-the-art and, most
importantly, working equipment - truly
the difference in technology between a
club and a heat-seeking missile
launcher, although it is fair to say that
the end result will be the same. Here too
are the young, motivated and, most
importantly, pre-trained workforce. Not
much training goes on here to distract
the workforce from experiments and
results. All told, here is where broad
research programs can be initiated,
where advances can be made at a
spectacular rate, and where technical
innovations can be implemented
quickly.
So why not leave behind my smelly
cave, the out-of-date materials and
methods, and my teaching duties? I
guess I like what I do. I like the
atmosphere in my lab, the fact that the
walls are impregnated with the sounds of
students talking and working, the
discussion of good experiments, the
excitement of new results, the
disappointment of experiments that did
not work and papers that were rejected.
I like the fact that our science is still
driven by hypotheses and models. I like
the fact that we are not slaves to the
latest technologies and machines. I like
training the next generation of scientists
and teachers, and no I don’t mind if
some of them go into biotech. I’ll
continue to evolve, albeit very, very
slowly. Life in the Stone Age is not so
bad.
Damn, the fire just went out, and I had
used the last of the moss and kindling! I
wonder if the clan next door will let me
use one of their Duraflame logs?
Caveman
Cell Science at a Glance
Cell Science at a Glance is included as a poster in the paper copy of the journal and available
in several downloadable formats in the online version, which we encourage readers to download
and use as slides. Future contributions to this section will include signalling pathways,
phylogenetic trees, multiprotein complexes, useful reagents . . . and much more.
A myosin tree
(October 2000)
Paxillin interactions
(December 2000)
Actin dynamics
(January 2001)
We would like to encourage readers to submit ideas for future contributions to this section.
Potential Cell Science at a Glance articles should be addressed to the Executive Editor and
sent to Journal of Cell Science, 140 Cowley Rd, Cambridge, CB4 0DL, UK.