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Science, Ethics, and Policy – Page 8

MassGenomics

Medical genomics in the post-genome era

To PhD or not to PhD

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Genome Technology picked up an interesting blog entry in today’s Daily Scan (as GT often does). This one was a post by Sandra Porter on why having a PhD can make it harder to find a job. She has an interesting academic-turned-industry perspective on the challenges that many companies in the US are facing: not enough technicians, and way too many PhD’s. One cause of this imbalance is the fact that many students and postdocs are “misled by the incorrect notion that science jobs require a Ph.D.”

Certainly in the US, the career picture has changed dramatically in recent years in research-related jobs. I know a few PhD-holding researchers who failed to get a slice of the ever-dwindling NIH pie, and then found themselves unemployed. Another funding trend that may be a factor is the growth of big-consortium research, which by many reports is displacing the traditional swath of smaller, single-PI grants. Consortium projects typically need only a few PhD’s, but many programmer and technician-level researchers to do the work.

A colleague of mine, David Larson, recently finished his PhD. He looked for PhD-level biology positions open in St. Louis, and didn’t find any. Fortunately, he also dabbled in programming, which is how he ended up here at the genome center. It’s a happy ending for Dave and for our group.

It’s not a happy ending for many PhD’s, however, even if they’re willing to take a staff-level position. Sandra’s post, however, touched on the unfortunate truth that they might seem over-qualified to many employers that need lab technicians who will perform the same task day-to-day. In contrast, applicants with a bachelor’s degree and the ability to learn (lab techniques or programming) make attractive candidates. You begin to understand why a PhD might be a disadvantage.

I’m going to throw an opinion out now – it represents my views alone, not my institution’s – that maybe we’re training too many PhD’s. This month WashU awarded doctorates to 544 candidates at graduation, and 187 of those were in science or medical fields. That’s a lot. WashU PhD admissions in these areas are very competitive, but nowhere near the level for our medical school admissions. Then again, you might have noticed, we never have enough doctors. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there.

Happy DNA Day!

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NHGRI

April 25th is National DNA Day in the U.S., an occasion that commemorates discovery of DNA’s structure by Watson and Crick (published in Nature on April 25th, 1953) and the completion of the Human Genome Project fifty years later in April 2003. NHGRI has set up a web site for DNA day featuring a welcome video from Francis Collins and a live chatroom where anyone can chat with “leading researchers in the field of genetics.” Strangely I haven’t yet gotten the call.

The WashU Genome Center outreach office is also sponsoring a number of activities. A number of DNA Day Ambassadors are visiting local high schools in St. Louis. A symposium on the medical campus will have student poster sessions and a seminar, “The Human Genome Sequence: A Foundation for Biological Inquiry”, given by our co-director Elaine Mardis.

By chance I happened to Google the King and Wilson 1975 paper the other day, and came across a very interesting site of Landmarks in the History of Genetics. While not up-to-date, it’s a nice story of key events in DNA’s history (and their implications) since 1745. Of course there’s Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, and Mendel’s Experiments in Plant Hybridisation just six years later. I recognize the name of Erwin Chargaff, whose insights (1950) into the relative incidence of A, C, G, and T nucleotides was not random, but perhaps a kind of code. Two years later came the Hershey and Chase experiments, which showed that viruses infect host cells by injecting their DNA, while the proteins generally remain outside the cell. Of course we know Watson and Crick (1953), as well as King and Wilson (1975). How about Barbara McClintock, whose discovery of transposable elements in maize in the 1940’s was not fully recognized for decades?

That rather sounds like Mendel, doesn’t it? I wonder, how many other important discoveries in biology have already been made, but not yet appreciated. It’s something to think about. Happy DNA Day everyone!