The European Molecular Biology Laboratory

What is it famous for? Being a successful, truly European research centre — still a very rare species. Early plans for EMBL were much influenced by the most famous of the species, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN), and by Leo Szilard, a nuclear physicist turned molecular biologist. Where is it? About 80% of EMBL group leaders are at the main centre, on top of a beautiful but somewhat inaccessible hill just outside Heidelberg, Germany. There are also three outstations: one at Hamburg, Germany, that makes use of the local synchrotron radiation source; a second at Grenoble, Switzerland, that uses a local neutron beam source; and the third and newest, a biocomputing centre at Hinxton (Cambridge), UK. Although some governments signed up as early as 1968, others, such as the UK's, complained about cost and the possibility of a 'brain drain' to Europe. Astonishingly, Margaret Thatcher, then Secretary of State for Education and Science, was responsible for the turnaround in the UK. She apparently felt some kinship with Kendrew, a Nobel prize-winning crystallographer: on first meeting him, she announced " I too am a protein crystallographer. " Who pays the bills? In 1994, over two thirds of the EMBL budget of DM 67 million (about $ 47 million) was contributed by Germany, France, the UK and Italy; the remainder was divided among the other eleven countries. Contributions are determined by net national income. Who works there? The proportion of scientists from a member country does correlate reasonably well with the financial contribution made by that country, but EMBL says that individual excellence is paramount in hiring. Germans are by far the largest The picture on the right shows the dorsal surface of the cuticle of a terrestrial isopod, the woodlouse Porcellio scaber (also known as a pill bug, cheese hog, slater or sow bug). The image won the first prize in the electron micrography: life science section of the Polaroid (UK) 1995 instant photomicrography competition. The pseudocoloured scanning electron micrograph reveals two key modifications of the woodlouse exoskeleton. The first is that, unlike the continuous impermeable cuticle of insects, the woodlouse 'shell' is made up of plaques that allow water to be taken up at their edges when the creature is in its favoured humid atmosphere. In unfavourable conditions the plaques also allow evaporation to occur for cooling purposes. The second type of modification visible in the picture …