Author: Jeremy Berg

Headshot of Jeremy Berg.

As former NIGMS director, Jeremy oversaw the Institute’s programs to fund biomedical research and to train the next generation of scientists. He was a leader in many NIH-wide activities and also found time to study a variety of molecular recognition processes in his NIH lab.

Posts by Jeremy Berg

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Stetten Lecturer Illustrates Payoffs of Curiosity-Driven Research

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Bonnie Bassler

The DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Lecture is an annual October event that gives us the opportunity to showcase outstanding scientists and their cutting-edge research to the NIH community.

This year’s speaker, Bonnie Bassler, gave an exceptional talk on quorum sensing in bacteria, and I highly encourage you to watch the videocast. Bonnie’s work is yet another illustration of how curiosity-driven research–in this case, into why bioluminescent bacteria only glow at high cell densities–can reveal fundamental biological processes that would have been very difficult to foresee with more directed research approaches. The potential applications of Bonnie’s discoveries include the prevention of dangerous biofilms and the development of new antibiotics and rational probiotics.

Adding to this year’s Stetten Lecture excitement were the Nobel Prizes to past speakers (Elizabeth Blackburn in 1990 and Ada Yonath and Venki Ramakrishnan (along with Peter Moore) in 2000). We’ve previously featured several Nobel laureates as lecturers after they won the prize, but this is the first time the lecture preceded the prizes. We’ll see if the trend continues!

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Recovery Act Summary for Fiscal Year 2009 and Plans for Fiscal Year 2010

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Fiscal Year 2009 is now complete. In addition to distributing the funds associated with the NIGMS regular appropriation of nearly $2 billion, we were able to commit $463 million in Recovery Act funds (out of the $505 million allocated to NIGMS and approximately $21 million more provided to us by the NIH Office of the Director). We estimate that we have $63 million more to spend in Fiscal Year 2010. See the end of this post for more on our plans.

We made nearly 1,600 Recovery Act awards in Fiscal Year 2009, distributed as shown below:

Percentage by activity of total NIGMS Recovery Act funds

This plot shows the percentage by activity of total NIGMS Recovery Act funds (including the $505 million allocated to NIGMS and the approximately $21 million in additional funds that the NIH Office of the Director provided to support 17 Challenge grants and to co-fund the Grand Opportunity (GO) grants) (left) and the total amount awarded (including year 2 commitments, if any) (right). The number of awards in each activity is shown over each bar. The “Other” category includes a small number of awards in a range of activities, including supplements to K08, K99, R00, P01 and U01 mechanisms. More details about these awards can be found in NIH RePORTER.

Let me briefly describe the decision-making processes that led to this distribution. We set aside funds to support 15 Challenge grants (in addition to the Challenge grants assigned to NIGMS but supported by Recovery Act funds from the NIH Office of the Director), approximately 1 Grand Opportunity grant in each of the 10 NIGMS areas of interest and 20 Faculty start-up (P30) grants. Most of the remaining Recovery Act funds were allocated to the five NIGMS divisions and centers in proportion to their percentage of NIGMS funding.

For activities that had undergone recent peer review, such as Challenge (RC1) grant applications, R01 applications, AREA (R15) grant applications and competitive revisions, priority scores and—in many cases—the current availability of funds within investigators’ laboratories were major factors in determining funding priority.

For administrative supplements to grants that had been previously peer reviewed and funded, program directors took a number of factors into account, with the goal of attempting to maximize the potential impact of the portfolio of Recovery Act awards on the American scientific enterprise. First, the proposed research had to be within the scope of the original funded grant. Additional considerations included the potential impact of the proposed funding on the specific aims of the grant; NIGMS portfolio balance; whether investigators had received other Recovery Act support; the economic stimulus impact of the funding; and the distribution of funds across regions, states and institutions.

Overall, we were able to support approximately 40% of the administrative supplement requests that we received.

Approximately 10% of our Recovery Act funds remain to be invested in Fiscal Year 2010. We plan to use most of these funds to support—for up to one year—administrative supplements, competitive revisions and other applications that have already been submitted. This means that we are still considering funding a modest number of previously submitted administrative supplement requests and other awards with our limited remaining Recovery Act funds.

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NIH Awards 14 Grants Examining Women’s Careers in Science

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It has been very gratifying to see outstanding female scientists appropriately recognized in the Nobel Prize announcements this month. However, a variety of evidence reveals that, in many fields of science and engineering, women’s careers progress along different trajectories than do men’s careers. As I noted in a previous post, NIGMS has led an initiative to support social science research directed toward examining and developing a rigorous evidence base regarding the factors that influence women’s careers in the biomedical and behavioral sciences and engineering. This effort resulted in a new funding opportunity, and NIH announced last week that it had awarded 14 R01 grants.

In addition to studying causal factors, such as family, finances and culture, the new research projects will also look at the role of mentoring, environment, funding support and other interventions. To learn more about the projects, search NIH RePORTER by RFA-GM-09-012. With a total of $16.8 million in funding from 15 NIH institutes, centers and programmatic offices, these grants reflect NIH’s broad commitment to addressing these issues.

We look forward to following the results over the next four years. I expect that they will have broad implications with regard to programs that promote the advancement of women’s careers in science and engineering, especially at critical junctures.

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2009 Chemistry Nobel Prize Recognizes the Determination of the Ribosome’s Three-Dimensional Structure

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We once again received wonderful Nobel news today. We were delighted to learn that three long-time NIGMS grantees–Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath–will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry Link to external web site for their “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.”

Remarkably, at the same 1987 “Evolution of Catalytic Function” Cold Spring Harbor meeting where I first met Carol Greider, I heard Ada Yonath describe her initial attempts to crystallize and determine the structure of the ribosome. Tom Steitz also spoke about his exciting structure determination of DNA polymerase I, and Peter Moore talked about his work on the ribosome using specific deuterium labeling and neutron scattering methods developed in part with Venki Ramakrishnan. The meeting was filled with the promise that we would one day visualize and begin to understand this elaborate RNA-protein machine in atomic detail. More than a decade later, that promise was realized, as recognized by today’s announcement.

The Nobel committee has the daunting challenge of limiting itself to up to three laureates for each prize. Several other long-time NIGMS grantees who also contributed greatly to our understanding of the structure and function of the ribosome include Peter Moore, Harry Noller and Joachim Frank.

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Remembering Ruth Kirschstein

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Ruth Kirschstein, M.D.We were all very sad to learn of the death of Ruth Kirschstein, M.D., last evening. She will be deeply missed here at NIGMS, NIH, and beyond.

Dr. Kirschstein was an iconic figure at NIH and in the scientific community. She was the long-time director of NIGMS, serving from 1974 to 1993, and was the first female director of an NIH institute. She also served as acting director of NIH, deputy director of NIH, and in other key positions.

Dr. Kirschstein truly represented the best of NIH—public service, wisdom, and deep knowledge and analysis of important problems. She was so profoundly modest that Congress had to surprise her when they acknowledged her contributions and commitment to research training with the naming of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards.

I am sure much more will be said and written about her in the future, and we will share this with you in the comments section. I encourage you to post your own thoughts about her as well.

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Nobel Prize to Long-Time NIGMS Grantees

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We were delighted to learn this morning that long-time NIGMS grantees Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine  Link to external web site for their “discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”

I remember very well the presentation by then-graduate student Carol Greider at the 1987 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology about her purification and initial characterization of telomerase and component RNA. Her passion and enthusiasm for science stood out, even in that high-powered crowd. I also enjoyed working with her when we were colleagues at Johns Hopkins before I came to NIGMS.

The work of Blackburn, Greider and Szostak represents an archetype of curiosity-driven basic research. The fact that DNA synthesis requires a template creates a clear challenge to copying the ends of DNA. The reality of this challenge was clear from Szostak’s studies with linear DNA molecules in yeast. Using a model organism (Tetrahymena) selected for its unusually high abundance of DNA ends, Blackburn’s lab identified telomere sequences and showed, with Szostak, that these sequences did, in fact, stabilize linear DNA molecules in yeast. Blackburn and Greider then set out to detect and purify the enzyme that adds telomeres to DNA.

After their success, they and many other researchers have explored the implications of these observations as they relate to cancer, cellular aging and stem cells. In the years to come, we can expect to see additional implications and broad exploitation of these observations.

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President Obama Visits NIH

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Yesterday, President Obama came to NIH to deliver a speech highlighting the role of scientific research in the Recovery Act and the potential impacts of biomedical research on health. This event marked the end of the fiscal year and the extraordinary effort of the scientific community and the NIH staff in moving forward with Recovery Act investments. You can watch the video on the NIH Videocast Web site.

We will be posting more information about the status of NIGMS investments of Recovery Act funds soon.

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The New Scoring System

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At the recent meeting of the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council, our Council members had their first opportunity to examine summary statements using the new peer review scoring system.

Many aspects of the new scoring system are unfamiliar, including the use of overall impact scores as integers from 10 (best) to 90 (worst). A summary of the new scoring system is well described in a scoring system and procedure document, and an earlier version of this was shared widely with reviewers.

As background, I compiled some data for approximately 300 NIGMS R01 applications reviewed under the new system.

This plot shows the distribution of overall impact scores along with the corresponding percentiles.

This plot shows the distribution of overall impact scores along with the corresponding percentiles. Note the relative spread of percentile scores at a given impact score. This spread is due to the fact that percentiles are determined independently for each study section that considered 25 or more R01 applications. Otherwise, percentiles are determined across the overall pool of R01 applications reviewed by the Center for Scientific Review.

For comparison, here is a plot of a similar number of NIGMS R01 applications reviewed using the old scoring system.

A plot of a similar number of NIGMS R01 applications reviewed using the old scoring system.

Note the similar spread of percentiles at a given score due to study section-specific percentiling.

I would like to mention another major change as a result of the NIH Enhancing Peer Review effort. You must use restructured application forms and instructions, including a 12-page length limit for R01s, for applications due on or after January 25, 2010. For details, see the recent NIH Guide notice. We plan to post updates about these changes as key dates approach.

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Nearly Half of NIGMS Recovery Act Funds Now Awarded

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Three weeks ago, I posted a graph of the cumulative investment of NIGMS Recovery Act funds as a function of the award start date. Below is an updated version.

This graph shows that the rate at which we have made Recovery Act awards from July to September has accelerated.

This graph differs from my previous one in two ways. First, it is up to date as of yesterday. Second, it includes commitments for the second year of awarded 2-year R01 grants. As it shows, we are close to allocating half of our $505 million of Recovery Act funds. We are making more awards every day, with the Challenge grants, GO grants, and faculty start-up (P30) grants to be awarded soon.

The awards made to date can be broken down into seven major categories.

This graph shows the amount and total number of awards in each category. R01: 112. R01 equivalent supplements: 511. AREA grants (R15): 11. AREA grants supplements: 22. MBRS SCORE (S06, SC1,2,3, R25) supplements: 77. MARC (T34) supplements. Research training grant (T32) supplements: 90.

This graph shows the amount and total number of awards (blue type above each bar) in each category. The gray-shaded area over the R01 category reflects second-year commitments.

To put these figures in context, NIGMS currently supports approximately 3,600 R01 grants; 50 AREA (R15) grants; 250 Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) S06, SC1, SC2, SC3, and R25 grants; 50 Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) T34 grants; and 300 institutional research training T32 grants.

We will continue to update you on our Recovery Act activities as we move from one fiscal year to the next at the end of this month.

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Nation’s Top Science Honor Goes to Francis Collins, JoAnne Stubbe, Others

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Yesterday, President Obama announced the 2009 recipients of the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The nine winners of the National Medal of Science include NIH Director Francis Collins and long-time NIGMS grantee JoAnne Stubbe, a biochemist at MIT. I am delighted that the President recognized these outstanding scientists and innovators for their contributions.