“The long-term goal of the new institute is to better understand the teeming world inside cells, where thousands of organelles and millions of molecules interact in a dynamic ballet that researchers are just beginning to fathom.
“We really don’t have a good idea of how normal cells work, and what goes wrong in disease,” said Rick Horwitz, the former University of Virginia professor who jumped at the chance to lead the new institute. “People spend careers trying to understand little parts of the cell, but nobody has stitched it together — because it’s too complicated for any individual to study.”
The institute will take on the challenge by combining new technologies, such as microscopes that can visualize living cells in three dimensions, with enough computational firepower to make sense of the flood of data that will result, Horwitz said.”
It’s really the best of times and the worst of times to be a biologist – so much amazing stuff happening, and support for science from all sorts of organizations, but not enough funding or infrastructure to support everyone who is training to be a biologist (especially as pharmaceutical companies focus more and more on short-term and low-risk science and decrease the size of in-house research laboratories).
I thought that capitalism was supposed to make sure that this kind of thing balanced out (Yes, I did take an online economics course and start jokingly calling myself an economist!)
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