Thinking Outside the Box

I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference that is completely outside of my field of study. I study bioinorganic chemistry and do most of my work on small metalloproteins, so I spend a lot of time thinking about fundamentals like inorganic spectroscopy, biophysics, and biochemistry.  I managed to have some interdisciplinary experiences early on and these likely influenced my choice of a Chemical Biology program over the more traditional programs that I was also admitted to.

This past week I saw some talks at the Goldschmidt, which is one of the largest geochemistry conferences. While there, I spent most of my time at the bio-geochemistry talks, since that’s what’s most interesting to me, and stuff like vulcanism (it’s a thing, I swear) and mantle chemistry is totally out of my reach. I have long had an interest in applying some of my skills to environmental problems and questions, but outside of reading some papers, haven’t had the opportunity to get a good idea of what’s been going on in the field. This experience got me thinking a lot about specialization in science and how, without having finished my Ph.D., I feel that am already very specialized.

While it’s true that what our group does is pretty interdisciplinary and what my project has entailed has been particularly broad, I worry about being able to broaden my horizons even more. Most people will tell you that the most important thing you learn in a Ph.D. is learning what you don’t know and how to get that information, but it’s still hard to imagine beginning a in a completely different field whether that be policy, publishing, or just a different scientific field, without knowing what’s there and what isn’t. Understanding the state of the field and the perspectives from which a lot of people in the field work are important to be able to work productively and push limits.

Modern society selects for specialization. We all know this–from the advent of agriculture and tradesmen, people have been specializing. Science is no different. Lots of progress has been made by people specializing and developing more and more powerful techniques, just think of protein NMR. So obviously expertise is rewarded and sought after, but the important questions and research that will be done will (in part) require synthetic skills. Meaning being able to bring together multiple fields of study, a breadth of background and conversation, and unique skill sets (in a person or a team).

How well are most scientists trained to work in such a situation? My gut answer would be that the oldest scientists are great at this. Peruse the notebooks of Linus Pauling if you don’t believe me (it’s online here). He was a polymath with a voracious appetite for knowledge. Richard Feynman is another person who comes to mind. But there’s definitely a cadre of people in younger generations that have thrived off of specialization. Perhaps in response to this, interdisciplinary fields, journals, and programs are springing up. The NIH and NSF are looking into funding groups of scientists for a single project, rather than single labs. From where I am within the system it’s hard to tell whether this will favor broader interests or whether we’ve just reached another level of specialization.

For myself, I am interested in having a broad perspective, and so choosing how I decide to approach my career post-graduate school seems very significant. Finding an appropriate post-doc that allows me to learn a different field/technique and poises me for progress in a new area is difficult and daunting. I’m looking to find a way to break outside my (self-) imposed boundaries and do something that I care about; that pushes me creatively, and that matters, and I have a sneaking suspicion that for me, the answer lies in between disciplines.

What is Chemical Biology to me?

Cross-posted at ACS Chemical Biology

I often get asked, “what is Chemical Biology, anyways?” I’m sure we all get asked this question as it’s a relatively new field. The University of Michigan’s program in Chemical Biology is the first or one of the first free-standing programs in Chemical Biology and it was influenced by U of M being one of the first recipients of the NIH’s Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program. 

 

One of my favorite things about my doctoral program (and the NIH training program) is how cohesive we are, despite our research diversity. We have people who do small molecule inhibitors, FRET on ribosomes, protein NMR, and even bioinorganic chemistry (like me!). I’ve often felt like an outlier in my program not only because I am probably the only person who spends any time thinking about inorganic chemistry the way an inorganic chemist would, but also working on some of the most basic research. But aside from that, I think one the things that brings us all together is the interdisciplinary techniques and training we have. Take me: I am academically-trained as a bio(inorganic)chemist, lab-trained as a microbiologist, but my current research requires not only biochemistry, but small molecule synthesis and a not insignificant amount of inorganic chemistry and spectroscopy. I’m practically the definition of a “jack of all traides, master of none.” And, perhaps I’m projecting here, but I feel like many of the pioneers of this field have felt that at one time or another, since many trained in one field and then crossed into another as they straddled the line and defined a new discipline. In fact, I’ve heard both Laura Kiessling and Dennis Dougherty say these types of things in talking about how they went from total organic synthesis to carbohydrate biosynthesis or physical organic chemistry to neuroreceptors. Now, we are beginning to see a new group of scientists, one who looked specifically for “Chemical Biology” programs when they applied for graduate school. How will this new generation of scientists change the field wither their thinking? I look forward to see how the field develops as people who explicitly trained in it for their PhDs graduate and begin their own research programs. I think people like these will bring a very different perspective, they will reside intellectually in the interdisciplinary rather create it. 

 

But I digress. Going back to the original question: “What is Chemical Biology?” I think most people would say, “applying chemistry (or chemical principles) to problems of biology.” But I like to use a slightly different framing, perhaps because I worry that it sounds like we’re mostly talking about organic synthesis. So I usually say, “a bottom-up approach, based on chemical principles and tools, to questions in biology.” I like this framing because it talks more about the methods than the questions, which is a major distinction. All scientists want to figure out how the world we live in works; the difference is sometimes more in how we answer the questions that we have rather than what questions we have.