Puzzling it out

Scientific research is undergoing significant restructuring. New fields are emerging, once-separate fields are merging, and many of us are trying to figure out how to combine tools and thinking from different areas of science. Nearly a year into my second post-doc, I search for the best metaphor to describe my ongoing metamorphosis from chemist to chemical biologist. In graduate school, I learned and practiced the art of organic synthesis. Four years of my life were dedicated to the construction of a single molecule. In search of a more tangible connection to the world of biology, I spent my first post-doc thinking about drug design and building libraries of small organic molecules. Now, I am in a molecular biology and yeast genetics lab, thinking about peptide libraries and genetic selections. And this brings me to my metaphor. Coming into the world of biology from chemistry was a bit like starting a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle without knowing what picture the pieces were going to create. For the first few months, each new protocol was like one of those knobby puzzle pieces — I could find nothing to connect them together in my mind and was getting truly desperate to find a few simple straight-edged pieces. My mounting frustration did not help. Only months before, I’d been an ‘expert’ in synthesizing molecules. Graduate students and post-docs came to me for advice. But in this brave new environment, where hallway chit-chat is not of palladiummediated couplings but of gene deletions and transformation efficiency, my molecular expertise did not seem like much of a resource. I grew used to having to ask questions: ‘Is this cut or uncut DNA?’; ‘When do yeast reach stationary phase?’; ‘What’s a revertant?’ In my struggle to understand how biologists think about biology, I attended seminars and asked other scientists about their work, but it was always the same dilemma. I’d grasp a few familiar words and phrases from the foreign language of genetic acronyms and previously unencountered molecular biology protocols, but I’d have no framework into which to fit them. Finally, those disorienting first months were behind me and, like getting a few edge pieces of my puzzle hooked up, I began to see differences between the way chemists and biologists think and approach problems.