HEW to stress fundamental health research A strong commitment to fundamental research has been formally estab lished by the Department of Health, Education & Welfare in a newly is sued statement of health research principles. The principles are in tended as a guide for HEW as the department works out its budget strategy. "We can now tell the American people how and why we intend to support health research," said former HEW secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr. in releasing the statement. But there is a long way to go, he says, in trans lating the principles into a sound budget strategy that acknowledges the peeds of each agency yet equita bly distributes funds among them. The principles touch on five areas: • Strong steady support of the search for fundamental knowledge. • Concern with specific health problems and clinical application of fundamental knowledge. • Provision of the knowledge needed to promote health and pre vent disease, including generating the basic information that must underlie government regulations related to public health. • Enhancement of present re search capabilities to assure future health gains. • Establishment of scientific ex cellence as judged primarily by peer review, a balancing of need and op portunity for advancing knowledge, and conformance to sound ethical principles as standards for support of health research. The statement of principles had its
Califano: how we support research 6
C&EN Aug. 20, 1979
beginning in October 1978, when more than 100 witnesses representing many research and health organiza tions in the U.S. testified at a Na tional Conference on Health Re search Principles held by HEW. D
Recession could be severe, report warns Congress' Joint Economic Committee says that the economy is now in the midst of a "mild" recession, but warns in its midyear report that "there is at least a possibility that the recession could be severe." The committee does not recom mend the usual approach of calling for a general tax cut to ease the effects of a possibly severe recession. Rather, it says that as the U.S.'s dismal pro ductivity is an important cause of the nation's economic problems, the so lution lies in adopting long-run poli cies aimed at expanding productive potential. It is possible, according to the committee, to enhance growth pros pects in the coming decade by a carefully designed program aimed at promoting capital investment and upgrading worker skills. To this end, it says that some ad ditional allowance must be made for
inadequate business depreciation schedules. It points out that because the U.S. tax system does not allow the depreciation allowance to cover the cost of replacing capital equipment at inflated prices, inflation will reduce the rate of return on investment and cause profits to be overstated. This, in turn, will increase businesses' tax liability leaving them less money to invest in capital projects. The report is accompanied by a lengthy staff analysis, using an eco nomic model to make baseline, opti mistic, and pessimistic projections of where the U.S. economy may be heading during the 1980's. The base line study shows GNP growing at an average annual rate of 3.5%, inflation averaging about 6% per year, and unemployment averaging 5%. The pessimistic projection shows inflation running at about 9%, imported pe troleum prices rising 20% faster than the general rate of inflation, real GNP rising only 1.5 to 2.5% annually, and unemployment 7% or more. Under the optimistic scenario, inflation would average less than 5%, energy prices would rise no more than other prices, unemployment would ap proach 4.5%, and real GNP would rise at a rate of about 4% per year. To achieve this optimistic projec tion, the U.S. would have to experi ence greatly improved productivity and a sharp reduction in its depen dence on foreign oil. Π
Cells energy use high for protein synthesis Protein synthesis is an exacting pro cess that costs a living cell a great deal of energy. Much of that energy, per haps many times more than previ ously supposed, is used for proof reading processes that ensure the accuracy of such synthesis, according to Michael A. Savageau and Rolf R. Fréter of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Living cells are fastidious about their proteins, checking and doublechecking them at particular stages during synthesis. One crucial check comes when an amino acid is loaded onto a transfer RNA (tRNA) molecule, which carries the amino acid into place along the growing protein chain. Each amino acid is put onto one (or sometimes one of several) tRNA molecules bearing only the anticodon for that amino acid. (The anticodons of the tRNA molecules designate which amino acids are picked out.) The loading of amino acids onto tRNA's is done by enzymes, called synthetases, which during loading pick the right amino acid (usually) from among the possible 20 or so. They also perform the crucial proof-
reading function by removing incorrect amino acids when they are wrongly loaded. Now Savageau and Fréter have established that there is a specific relationship between the degree of accuracy of proofreading and the energy cost of such proofreading. Using that relationship, they have calculated that cells are indeed lavish, spending as much as 2% of the energy it takes to make a cell on checking accuracy of tRNA loading. The Michigan scientists draw several other conclusions from their analysis of amino-acid proofreading. First, such proofreading operates more efficiently if an enzyme corrects its own error before the wrongly loaded tRNA gets away than if that loaded tRNA wanders around freely for awhile until another discriminating enzyme binds it to nip off the wrong amino acid. Second, reaching the maximum theoretical accuracy would require an infinite expenditure of energy by a cell. But because a cell has a limited energy supply, it can never achieve that level of accuracy. D
