Cell biology

Cell biology is fundamental to life sciences research, revealing how cells work both internally and externally throughout the body. For the past 25 years, the field has relied on taking the cell apart to understand the function of individual cell components. But with whole genomes now readily available, along with high-powered modeling and analysis techniques, the focus has shifted to putting the pieces back together. The goal is a complete understanding of how cells function within living organisms.

Someday, biologists hope they will know how all the genes in the genome functionally interact together. Quantitative models will measure and predict how an organism responds to genetic, behavioral and pharmaceutical manipulation.

Getting there will require collaboration with physicists, engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians, as well as cell biology's traditional partners in genetics, chemistry and physiology. New subspecialties have arisen, such as systems biology with its focus on the control systems of cells, and computational biology, which models those systems. These provide opportunities for scientists to cross over into cell biology. And student biologists who can program software, or have a solid background in math or physics, are particularly attractive hires in both academia and industry.

Happily for those attracted by the field, there is still much to learn about cells, from yeast and bacteria to humans. How do cells move, and how do they communicate with one another? What controls the cycle of life and death, and what mechanisms relate to cancer? How does a cell organize itself and its internal components?

"There are lots of good, open questions," says David Burgess, a professor of biology at Boston College.

For Burgess, the big questions include cell division and polarity. He uses micromanipulation, reverse genetics and biochemical techniques to determine how the timing of cytokinesis (division of a cell's cytoplasm) is coupled to mitosis, or cell division, in sea urchin embryos.
Sea urchins also help Burgess investigate cytoskeleton polarity and the way proteins are distributed around the cell, or sorted, in Golgi-derived membranes, which help process and package proteins and lipids. The research has application to human diseases, especially congenital small intestine disorders. "Proper delivery of sorted proteins is essential to normal absorptive functions in the intestine," Burgess says. "Several congenital human diseases of the small intestine, including sucrase-isomaltase deficiency and microvillar atrophy, are likely the result of improper Golgi sorting or delivery."

Spectacular images

Burgess also relies on one of cell biology's fastest-growing fields for his research - live imaging.
According to John Condeelis, in vivo imaging - capturing the real-time activity of cells and their components in living organisms - will have a significant impact on cell biology.

"One of the big stumbling blocks of cell biology is that we still study cells in culture," says Condeelis, professor and co-chair of anatomy and structural biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York. "Cells grown in culture act differently in isolation, and their physiological function is lost."

Condeelis predicts that imaging will develop into a subspecialty called biophotonics (he codirects the college's Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center, and NSF also has a biophotonics funding program). "The generation of students we're training right now will be the first ones to be able to do definitive biological experiments in vivo," he says.

"Five years ago, when we built our facility, it was the first of its kind. Now every place has one. It's a major development in infrastructure," he says.

Condeelis' degree in high-energy physics helps him develop new imaging techniques to investigate cell movement, particularly breast cancer metastasis. His research team discovered that only a small population of cancer cells moves around within breast tumors. "These cells interact with macrophages and blood vessels, allowing them to metastasize to other areas of the body," says Condeelis. "We can see single tumor cells and their contents at second timescales, and identify the decisions they make."

The data garnered through advancements in imaging and analysis have also produced another new subspecialty in cell biology - computational biology: "Lately, the models have become so complicated that you have to do computations," says John Tyson, a professor of computational cell biology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).

The ultimate goal of computation biologists is to create models that accurately predict the behavior of complex biological systems in space and time. Eventually, researchers hope computational modeling will help design safer, more effective drugs and lead to individualized treatment for a wide variety of diseases

The need for new skills

In fact, computational biology is necessary just to transform the mounds of data into something cell biologists can comprehend and analyze. This translates into a growing need for computational cell biologists, both in academia and industry. Tyson's students readily find jobs in biotech and the pharmaceutical industry; many companies have in-house teams or are hiring staff with these skill sets. The federal funding outlook is also relatively rosy. "A couple of years ago, the NIH created a new study section called ‘Modeling and analysis of biological systems', so now we have a home at NIH," says Tyson

The rest of the field, however, is fighting for a shrinking pool of federal dollars and competition for tenure-track positions remains stiff. "The funding situation is very challenging for new and senior faculty," says Burgess, whose students go into academia, biotech, pharmaceutical industry and even patent law.

Many professors now encourage biologists to consider a second major in computer science and mathematics. Aimee Dudley, an assistant professor at the Institute for Systems Biology, a nonprofit research institute in Seattle, recommends students take statistics, computer science and programming, population genetics and engineering.

"The next generation of biologists is going to need these skills. We'll no longer have people who study biology because they don't like math," she says. But math is still secondary to a solid foundation in biological research, Dudley adds. "The thing that hasn't changed is you need a really strong background in biology and a fundamental understanding of experimental techniques."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12939-cell-biology--us-ad-feature.html