University-run proteomic and genomic centers face an applicant shortage. The problem could be a mix of stiff competition and old habits.
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Seeking the Proteomic/Genomic Researcher
J
ANTHONY FERNANDEZ
im Kerwin, 50, is a wanted man because he knows so much. And on a December night, a laboratory accident put his talents to the test. “The pump on the [ion] trap blew up,” he recalls. “It was enough to empty oil out all over the place.” The incident occurred at the new Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Technology Center at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA), and although Kerwin describes the mishap as “typical” in what can go wrong in a proteomic laboratory, what isn’t so ordinary is the fact that Kerwin is a microbiologist who knows how to handle and fix mass spectrometers. “I didn’t have any formal
Cheryl M. Harris
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training at all [in MS],” he says. “I’m totally self-taught as far as mass spec goes.” Kerwin’s knowledge of biology and MS has made him a sought-after commodity within the burgeoning business of proteomics that has also found its way into universities. As researchers witness the proliferation of university-run proteomic and genomic centers across the country, some say the demand to fill those centers with qualified workers who understand biology and analytical chemistry far exceeds the supply. “It requires a good search,” says Michael Greenlief, an analytical chemistry professor who co-runs the University of Missouri’s Proteomics Center in Columbia (MU), which opened two years ago and has seven staff members. The application pool for proteomics is a lot smaller than that for general analytical chemistry, says Greenlief. “What we are looking for is someone who’s good on the front end on the electrophoresis side, and someone who’s good on the mass spectrometry side.” Thanks to the Human Genome Project, researchers are discovering all too quickly just how important it is to combine biology with analytical chemistry when establishing a strong proteomic or genomic laboratory (1). Some researchers blame the shortage of applicants for these proteomic and genomic centers on a combination of stiff competition—with industry and academia fiercely vying for the best applicants—and an academic system that may be antiquated in an age when versatility rather than specificity in the sciences is more important. If a new game plan isn’t made, say some researchers, the small pool of applicants for these centers could become a very big problem. “If you haven’t got the people, then this investment [in proteomics] is going to be somewhat compromised,” says Bill Hancock of Northeastern University (NU) in Boston, Mass., who is also
the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Proteome Research. “There’s a real job for the universities to produce graduates in this field, because there is the need.”
Hunting for workers In 2001, Joseph Loo was recruited from Pfizer and left Ann Arbor, Mich., to help establish and head UCLA’s proteomic center, which opened last year. It has a staff of four, including Loo and his wife, Rachel, also a former Pfizer researcher. At the pharmaceutical company, Loo was head of an MS and proteomics division. He was told it took UCLA officials several years to fill his job, a joint faculty position within the university’s medical school and chemistry and biochemistry departments. “They identified proteomics as one of the areas that was really lacking on campus here at UCLA,” says Loo. “My goal coming here was to essentially set up something that was fairly similar to what . . . I was in charge of at Pfizer.” At the MU Proteomics Center, university officials received only 30 resumes for a nationally advertised mass spectrometrist position—about a tenth of the number usually received for a typical chromatographer job opening, says Greenlief. It took a year to build the staff, adds John Walker, a biology professor who co-runs the center with Greenlief. When asked about how long officials thought it would take to start the center, Walker laughed. “We thought we would be up and running in three months.” Hiring staff, in addition to finding the right equipment to use at the center, prolonged the process, explains Walker. The competition between universities and companies to grab researchers who already have significant, or at least some substantial, MS training has become fierce, even during hard economic times, says Hancock. “There’s been some layoffs in
“If you haven’t got the people, then
this investment [in proteomics] is going to be somewhat compromised.”
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the biotech industry, and folks are having problems getting new positions, but not if they have a mass spec background.” So far, Greenlief says that training people at MU’s Proteomics Center has worked; for Loo, that alternative is the less-desirable choice but one that has to be made nonetheless. “It’s obvious that we need more people, but we need more trained people, too,” says Loo. “We’ve been spending practically all of our initial time just training people to use the equipment and help plan experiments.” But even when university officials find the right person for the job, logistics and costs can become barriers in getting that person through the door. Loo feels there are more scientists experienced in proteomic research on the East Coast, and those researchers tend to stay in that area, he adds. Los Angeles is just starting to become known for biotechnology, says Loo. “We don’t have the talent pool locally that I would say other cities have.” Although there is a growing pool of applicants trained in proteomics in West Coast cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego, it’s been difficult wooing prospective researchers to move to Los Angeles, he adds. “People have a preconceived idea of what Los Angeles is like and the cost of living here. And I’m not going to kid anybody—it is very expensive to live in Los Angeles, and the traffic problems here are just as well known.” On top of that, adds Loo, it’s difficult for universities to match the higher salaries that industry can offer for qualified researchers.
Biology without the MS At the College of Wooster in Ohio, Dorottya Blaho, 21, an undergraduate studying biochemistry, says she can earn her degree without taking a single MS course. But she chose to learn GC/MS through an independent research project that involves determining the ratio of certain fragments formed from the carbonylation of aziridinium ions. “All of the courses that trained [students] for MS were more of the analytical chemistry courses,” says Blaho, who plans to go to graduate school. Some researchers say that crossing over one’s scientific discipline to experience others should be practiced at the undergraduate and graduate levels. “When you go to a graduate school, now especially, they just want you to be so focused,” says Kerwin, who has been doing MS since the early 1970s as a microbiologist. “They make it so hard on the kids that they really don’t
have much choice. I think a lot of it has to do with the way that the major professors were trained.” In the early 1980s, when Walker was a student at the University of Georgia, molecular biology was the science major to take, and MS didn’t have to be taken. He was fortunate that he had some MS training as a biochemistry major, but it was very little, he adds. Today, the trend continues, with students in the life sciences overlooking MS, and sometimes even the graduate students have little understanding of the technique, says Walker. “Even now, very few of our biology students get much exposure [to MS], in part because we haven’t had really the facilities here for biological applications using mass spectrometry,” he says. “At the graduate [level], I do think we’re going to be doing more and more analytical work, especially now that we have the resources.” It may be, however, difficult to start such a project for undergraduates, where about 90% of their biology majors are interested in medicine, adds Walker. “The less chemistry they can get, the happier they are. So, we force them through organic,” he says. They get very little real . . . hardcore analytical chemistry.” Statistics on what undergraduates choose as their majors reveal just how much more popular degrees in the life sciences are over those in the physical sciences, particularly chemistry. For example, at MU, the most frequently declared undergraduate majors for on-campus students in the 2001–2002 school year were in the biological sciences. Business administration came in second, and chemistry came in at no. 34. At UCLA, 21.9% of the 25,303 on-campus undergraduates declared the life sciences as their major for the 2001 fall semester. Only 7.6% declared their majors in the physical sciences. At NU, only 4.2% of 14,144 students declared their major to be chemistry for the 2001–2002 school year, compared with 11.9% who chose biology and health-related science majors. At least some of the undergraduate students who are enrolling in the life sciences may go into research. And if they do, explain researchers, it would be to their advantage to know MS. “I think that an undergraduate course . . . linked to an appropriate—say, a master’s course, which is actually the right level for many of these jobs—would be a very nice thing to be organized,” says Hancock. “And I think some universities are clearly thinking about that.” Walker says that one way MU officials can save money and still train students in MS is by integrating workM A R C H 1 , 2 0 0 3 / A N A LY T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y
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shops into existing courses. Already, the Proteomics Center has helped some of MU’s undergraduate students, who may not have thought about taking MS, to try it out. “If [undergraduates come] into my lab these days,” Walker says, “they’ll be much more exposed to proteomics [and] mass spectrometers than they would have two or three or four years ago.” Although more people today are trained to operate mass spectrometers, and universities are offering more classes to train students, “it doesn’t seem to be enough,” adds Loo. Today’s scientists should especially be familiar with the new techniques, such as matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization, say researchers. Loo, however, says it’s hard to find someone who is familiar with the modern aspects of MS, especially for proteins, he says. “Everyone, sort of, even as an undergraduate . . . got [his or her] hands on a GC/MS instrument.” Ted Williams, a professor emeritus at the College of Wooster and former chair of the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry, says it’s really at the graduate level that students become familiar with new MS techniques. “Hands-on experience in these techniques, no matter whether the skill is big or small, [doesn’t] really come until the graduate level . . . because the graduates are the instrument operators.” Overall, adds Williams, students need to know the fundamentals of biochemistry and analytical chemistry to really understand MS. Unfortunately, he says, undergraduates today may be taught the theory behind GC/MS, but about 50% at best get hands-on experience. And hands-on experience can be more elusive for undergraduates at larger universities. “It’s different for different schools,” he says.
Center in Cambridge, Mass., which was part of an international effort in the Human Genome Project. “We’re really trying to bring together in one building and in one community . . . people who run the gamut from the application of clinical medicine and the practice of medicine to the fundamental chemical and physical mathematical sciences.” At MU’s Proteomics Center, university researchers are encouraging a lot more interaction between the chemistry and life sciences departments, says Walker. But sometimes officials are still frustrated by the separation of disciplines. “You’ll find the mass spectrometer in the chemistry department, and that’s often physically separated from the separations [laboratory],” says Walker. He encounters cases in which chemists don’t understand what the biologists want out of proteomics, and the biologists have unrealistic expectations of the latest analytical techniques. “A lot of times, the biologist doesn’t want a complete analytical answer. . . . [Biologists] just need some clues that they can use [for] their other approaches in biochemistry, or molecular biology, or genetics to answer the biological question.” Inevitably, things will change. The Human Genome Project is largely credited for forcing scientists in the life sciences and analytical chemistry to think outside the box they were so used to confining themselves in decades ago, say researchers. Ironically, explains Walker, enzymology and protein biochemistry, both very popular in the 1970s, are experiencing a revival. And that will affect everyone in proteomics and genomics. “A lot of what is happening now is people are becoming more interested in the protein and the physiological processes, because we know what those genes are,” says Walker. “So, there’s been quite a big shift. And right now what we’re finding is that people have not been trained in those areas like they were 20 years ago. They’re going to have to pick those [skills] up again.”
“If [undergraduates
come] into my lab these days, they’ll be much more exposed to
proteomics [and] mass
spectrometers than they would have two or three or four years ago.”
Thinking outside the box Researchers are discovering that a multidisciplinary approach involving scientists in the life sciences and analytical chemistry is the right ingredient for a successful proteomic or genomic center. Biologists are definitely learning from the analytical chemists inside these proteomic and genomic research centers, and vice versa, says David Altshuler, director of the Program on Medical and Population Genetics at the Whitehead Genome 118 A
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Cheryl M. Harris is an associate editor of Analytical Chemistry.
Reference (1)
Zubritsky, E. Anal. Chem. 2002, 74, 23 A–26 A.
