Skirting around thin ice

paths with someone who was clearly born in the wrong century — an avid knitter, a lutist, or someone who will actually sit down and write a letter. These anachronisms are harder to find in science, but they do exist. In fact, a small band of them revealed themselves during a research cruise this summer to the Arctic Ocean. You might not think to look for an 19th Century scientist on a bright red, 420-foot-long icebreaker. After all, the “Healy” is bristling with high-tech toys. There’s a remotely operated submarine that can dive more than 2500 meters beneath the waves. The sub’s high-definition TV cameras reveal in stunning detail what’s crawling around on the bottom of the sea. Scientists aboard the ship also revel at daily access to email, even in latitudes so extreme that the communication pathway is a low-bandwith connection to polar-orbiting Iridium satellites. But Bodil Bluhm from the University of Alaska notes with irony that it takes this kind of set-up to do the kind of science she was born for. And that is to explore the natural history of a world that feels pretty well revealed by now. As Bluhm stood on deck one July day, sorting excitedly through a catch of sea-floor critters brought up in a trawl net, she remarked, “I actually would like to have lived 150 years ago in the early explorer phase” of ocean exploration. Then she thought better of it. “I would probably have sat at home and waited for my sailor husband to come back, or something. It’s good I’m here now.” The Arctic Ocean is one of the few places left on Earth where you can promise in your grant proposal that you will discover species entirely new to science — and not have to worry about eating your words. This 30-day expedition was designed as a biodiversity survey, looking at everything from invertebrates that cling to the bottom of ice floes, to graceful pelagic jellies, and benthic brittlestars that somehow thrive on the organic instrumentation, as well as new molecular tools, including a largescale collection of transgenic fly lines Rubin is planning to develop. Among the first group of appointees, computational biologist Sean Eddy perhaps stands out as one who was drawn to the essential idea of Janelia. Eddy was looking to have a smaller lab, with what he describes as “sort of the MRC and Bell Labs kind of style,” that would suit his interests in software development and his group’s mixture of theoretical and experimental work. “I was immediately attracted — even before they knew what they were going to do at the Farm — when Gerry Rubin started standing up and saying ‘this is the culture that we’re going to build.’ This was always my dream. I went up to him after that first time and I said, ‘Gerry, I don’t even care what you people work on there, I want to be considered.’” Though Eddy plans to initially continue his current work on computational biology and noncoding RNAs, he feels a pull in the direction of studying neural circuitry — a problem that he initially set out to tackle in C. elegans as a postdoc at the MRC. “I do dream about getting back into neurobiology... at Janelia Farm I’m going to be surrounded by all these great neurobiologists, and I’ll just be able to soak it all in.” He has a special interest in what he sees as Sydney Brenner’s “original question” — how a model organism like the worm integrates everything from sensory input to behavioral output. Conveniently, Brenner will be a Senior Fellow at Janelia, along with former Bell Labs director and former Lawrence Berkeley National Lab head Charles Shank. According to Shank, despite their different interests — Schank has a background in chemistry and an interest in optics — he and Brenner are proving that even Senior Fellows enjoy branching out. “I’ve had just an enormous good time talking with Sydney and the way he thinks about biology and technology... I’ve learned a great deal from Sydney already. Current Biology Vol 15 No 19 R782