GENOMICS STUDY

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Cross-Disciplinary Work Key Factor in Genomics Revolution Research Finds

How and Why Gene Hunting Changed the Culture of Science

HOUSTON, August 2018 – Years after the end of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the human genetic blueprint, the ramifications to science and its culture are still unfolding.

Ioannis Pavlidis, Eckhard Pfeiffer Professor of Computational Physiology at the University of Houston, Alexander Petersen, Professor of Management at UC Merced, and their colleagues reported in Science Advances that Human Genome Project scientists not only laid the groundwork for scientific breakthroughs for decades to come, but also helped bring into the mainstream a collaboration model that changed science’s cultural norms.

“One of the key factors of the success was the way it incorporated cross collaboration between biologists, computer scientists and other disciplines,” said Pavlidis. “Research was organized around a new model, the consortium model, where scientists from different fields and in different localities worked for years towards a common goal.”

Since Galileo first peered into a telescope and DaVinci sketched out human anatomy, the business of science had often been associated with independent endeavors. Systematic team efforts were transient exceptions. For centuries the image of the loner scientist was not updated, nor did it need to be — until recently.

Pavlidis and Petersen report that after the sequencing of the human genome was completed in 2003, the consortium model did not go away, and scientists never returned fully to their silos. In a clear departure from previous norms, new and established researchers from biology, computing, and other disciplines kept building consortia, unlocking the genetic secrets of fauna and flora, and transforming our ability to understand, predict, and edit life.

“In an era where science has been professionalized, one cannot fully appreciate the reasons for genomics’ success unless one looks at the effect it had on the researchers’ careers,” said Petersen.

To investigate this, the authors assembled a dataset that included biographic and funding information for more than 4,000 faculty in 155 biology and computing departments in the United States, including information for their 400,000+ publications co-authored with a network of nearly 500,000 collaborators.

Using big data and counterfactual modeling, the team demonstrated that biology and computing researchers who crossed disciplinary boundaries by collaborating with each other on genomics had more successful careers than their mono-disciplinary colleagues.

“Their cross-disciplinary publications had superior impact and the same patterns were found to be true at the international literature level,” said Petersen. Specifically, genomic articles with mixed authorship from biology and computing, or genomic articles with mixed biology and computing content, had significantly stronger impact compared to alternatives.

Petersen and Pavlidis believe that as cross-disciplinary work continues, scientific advancements will follow suit. “If we continue to do this and have well-timed and well-designed funding efforts, as the Human Genome Project had, then I think we can put scientific progress on steroids,” said Pavlidis.

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