The European Molecular Biology Laboratory: An International Collaborative Effort

THE EUROPEAN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY: AN INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE EFFORT LENNART PHILIPSON* Introduction What do we mean by molecular biology, and why is a combined European effort in this research area highly desirable? Molecular biology has been difficult to distinguish from other branches of the life sciences, and the witty definition provided by the British Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, that molecular biology is anything which interests molecular biologists, is in one sense profound. The molecular approach to biology stems from two concurrent but separate sets of events some 40 years ago. Groups of physicists in England and the United States approached biological problems at about the same time but with different techniques . In England, emphasis centered on the understanding of the three-dimensional structure of biological molecules in great detail. This was feasible only by X-ray crystallography. In order to obtain atomic resolution, the biological material must be highly purified and ordered preferentially in crystals or in two-dimensional lattices. The basic philosophy behind this work was simply that the structure and function of biological macromolecules are the two sides of the same coin; the function of a particular molecule is determined by its architecture. Biochemistry can teach us the pathways of chemical reactions in organisms , but only by understanding structure can we hope to understand in atomic detail how the reactions biochemists study are actually brought about. The structure of DNA, the hereditary material, was the outstanding contribution of this approach. The physicists in the United States, many of European origin, took a different approach. They emphasized the genetic route to the solution ?European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Postfach 10.2209, 6900 Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany.© 1986 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 003 1 -5982/86/2932/$0 1 .00 S96 I Lennart Philipson ¦ European Molecular Biology Laboratory of basic biological problems. They selected the simplest biological systems , bacteria and bacteriophages, to study the mechanism and chemistry of heredity and draw conclusions of universal relevance. By focusing their individual efforts on the same bacteria and bacteriophages, they discovered the basic biological and chemical properties ofDNA and how it controls heredity. The philosophy of the American groups was to introduce to biology the intellectual rigor of physics and chemistry. From the outset they decided to design, with their simple biological systems, precise experiments which would yield results that shed light on the mechanism of heredity. They sought precise answers to fundamental questions; instead of being content to observe and describe nature, they were natural historians. These two intellectual movements met, fused, and fertilized each other in 1953 when the structure of DNA was discovered. The elucidation of biomolecular structure in order to understand function and the reductionist approach to genetics created molecular biology as we now know it. The essence of molecular biology is to understand biological phenomena in terms of physics and chemistry, to make biology a basic and quantitative science. For that to happen, the requirements of evidence and proof in molecular biology have to be as rigorous and stringent as they are in physics and chemistry and require evidence from several different approaches obtained with different techniques. The foundation of molecular biology, which was completed 30 years ago, led to a quite new intellectual approach to biology. Molecular biology is as much a state of mind as anything else. It is not simply a new subdiscipline of biology, but a new intellectual approach to old biological problems. As such, it is now spreading to several of the classical subdivisions of biology, such as botany, zoology, and classical genetics. Molecular biology is the ultimate reductionist approach to the study of life. Since all organisms are made of atoms and molecules, it should be possible to understand biological processes in terms of the properties of these molecules, and it is that understanding which molecular biologists seek. It is in this sense that Francis Crick's definition of molecular biology is profound. If a life process interests molecular biologists because they see, or hope, that it is amenable to interpretation and understanding at the molecular level, then that biological phenomenon is part of molecular biology. In short, to molecular biology the classical subdivisions of the biological sciences...