A Cohesive Biology of Organisms Is on the Horizon

Viewpoint A Cohesive Biology of Organisms Is on the Horizon WILLIAM E. Zamer K as such and, instead, self-identify by specialization or research organisms (e.g., endocrinologists, herpetologists). In particular, the large number of professional societies representing subdisciplines and taxa in animal biology research reflects the current state of scientific fragmentation that constrains the ability of these communities to develop a more cohesive vision of the future of animal research. Even so, societal and intellectual forces are driving greater integration in organismal biology. The forces reveal the inherent value of a more integrated field. Here, I focus on four of them. Four forces First, the sharing of vast amounts of biological information combined with the increasing application of computational approaches to make use of it will result in further integration of organismal biology. Genome sequencing, once cost prohibitive, is becoming so widely accessible that individual investigators now use nextgeneration sequencing technologies on an expanding list of nonmodel species. The steadily improving ability to use computational methods to integrate various kinds of biological information to create new knowledge is presenting unprecedented opportunities to address long-standing biological questions. Organismal biologists, working on the same or phylogenetically related species, are increasingly collaborating by taking advantage of their access to shared genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. Shared resources and infrastructure are also becoming loci for collaborations among organismal biologists possessing different subdisciplinary expertise, who may not have previously considered collaboration. The iPlant Collaborative is an important example of shared infrastructure that is facilitating integration of the 848 BioScience • November 2011 / Vol. 61 No. 11 plant sciences around grand challenges identified by that research community. iPlant is expanding the utility of its tools so that other organismal biologists have an opportunity to use them; it is thereby leveraging the initial investment in tool development for the plant-sciences community. A renewed emphasis on the unity of life (box 3.1 in NRC 2009) is the second integrating force in organismal biology. Organismal biology is increasingly recognized for its contributions to the surrounding rungs on the ladder of biological organization, providing an intellectual framework and new knowledge that together enhance understanding across all organizational levels in biology. Much has been written about the need to rebalance reductionist with integrative approaches in biology. To fully understand the wealth of cellular and molecular information requires consideration of the interplay between organismal stability and dynamics and environmental interaction, which are relevant to the recently identified grand challenges in organismal biology (Schwenk et al. 2009). Similarly, a more integrated organismal biology can accelerate the understanding of population dynamics, ecological relationships, and ecosystem complexity. For example, immunologists, microbiologists, and animal physiologists are collaborating in studies of temperature acclimation of host– pathogen interactions. Not only will the knowledge base about organisms expand in a new way, but these integrated studies will lead to better epidemiological models. The latter will improve our understanding of, and possibly our ability to manage, pathogen outbreaks in economically valuable natural and agricultural populations. Integrative biology (Wake 2008) can accelerate the understanding of the complexity of living systems. Our www.biosciencemag.org nowledgeable observers should be optimistic about the intellectual vitality of organismal biology and its movement toward a more integrated future. It is a future in which researchers who study the diverse aspects of structure and function will approach their research from a more cohesive set of perspectives about the integrity of whole organisms. Late in 2008, the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) recognized an important opportunity in an invitation to speak to the executive committee of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB). In discussing priority areas for scientific investment, BIO had little input from the relevant research communities about their intellectual vision of the future of organismal biology. Therefore, in 2009, BIO decided to encourage the community to develop that future vision by asking SICB to identify grand challenges in organismal biology, to begin to develop a research agenda, and to identify the infrastructure needed to address the challenges. SICB was encouraged to include representatives from other relevant professional societies in the discussions. SICB quickly and enthusiastically identified five grand challenges (Schwenk et al. 2009). Subsequent publications and several workshops served to continue these discussions and to stimulate community organization (Stillman et al. 2011). The challenge for this community (as for others) has been overcoming the tendency of researchers to focus on their own subdisciplines; it is a problem all too common in our scientific culture. The subdisciplines of organismal biology are loosely integrated, intellectually and organizationally. Schwenk (2010) noted that organismal biologists do not think of themselves Viewpoint Improving education Finally, the integration of organismal biology will be spurred by changes in education. There have been persistent calls to change how graduate students are trained, away from the near-exclusive focus on highly specialized areas of biology to a more balanced, interdisciplinary model (Wake 2008, Schwenk 2010). Similar themes underpin a growing consensus about ways to improve undergraduate bio logy education (Brewer and Smith 2011). These reform trends in education are intertwined with the other www.biosciencemag.org three forces that are leading to greater integration of organismal biology. For example, calls for education reform cite the need to provide interdisciplinary training to prepare students to contribute to research on complex biological questions that require computational approaches. These calls for reform also recognize that students are motivated to pursue careers in science by their desire to help solve significant societal challenges (Brewer and Smith 2011). Intellectual barriers across organismal biology will be lowered as students are trained to work more collaboratively on problems that are not defined by subdisciplinary or taxonomic focus. As more researchers are trained in this way, scientific and societal payoffs will become evident, which will demonstrate not only the value of the training but the value of integrating organismal biology. The intellectual rewards to biology that could be achieved through greater integration of, and articul (...truncated)