Professor Douglas Kell's blog

Biotechnology, biologicals and banking

DKell — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:39:19 +0000

Last week, we completed our mission on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy to Korea with visits to Prof Hiroaki Kitano and colleagues at The Systems Biology Institute, to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and to Kyowa Hakko Kirin; the latter involved a very interesting and spotless £100M plant producing a variety of biologicals at the 10,000L scale. Most of my other activities last week were internal to BBSRC and I do not rehearse them.

I noted Ten bright ideas to make the banking serve the UK – rather than itself, a supplement to the THE on CARA, a very strong correlation between Departmental h-index and RAE2008 funding (implying the availability of a much simpler means of allocating QR funding if that is the purpose), a useful site detailing how to avoid long menus at call centre sites, an interesting piece on the uses of graphs for analysing big data, and Daniel Dennett on thinking. Regarding finance, I do wish an economist could explain to me why replacing VAT (reclaimable) and corporation tax (evidently avoidable) by a simple sales taxes in the country of consumption would not increase the UK tax take considerably. Most other countries have one.

Papers I noted including one – based on the human genome – on the benefits of open data, a comprehensive review of the role of molecular networks in drug discovery, one on the role of membrane transporters in improving food production, and one on honey constituents that improve bee nutrition and resilience (implying that assessment of xenobiotic toxicity is likely to be condition-dependent). I was also pleased to see the final publication of the human metabolic network reconstruction (“Recon2”) paper, and have sent off an invited commentary on it; it will be of interest to compare the behaviour of Recon2 as a function of the variance observable in human protein expression.

Finally, a video of the talk I gave at the Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science meeting I blogged about before is available.

Csermely P, Korcsmáros T, Kiss HJM, London G, Nussinov R: Structure and dynamics of molecular networks: A novel paradigm of drug discovery. A comprehensive review. Pharmacol Therapeut 2013; 138:333-408.
Mao W, Schuler MA, Berenbaum MR: Honey constituents up-regulate detoxification and immunity genes in the western honey bee Apis mellifera. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2013.
Schroeder JI et mult al.: Using membrane transporters to improve crops for sustainable food production. Nature 2013; 497:60-66.
Thiele I et mult al.: A community-driven global reconstruction of human metabolism. Nature Biotechnol 2013; 31:419-425.
Williams HL: Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome. J Polit Econ 2013; 121:1-27.
Wu L, Candille SI, Choi Y, Xie D, Jiang L, Li-Pook-Than J, Tang H, Snyder M: Variation and genetic control of protein abundance in humans. Nature 2013.

Biotechnology in Korea and Japan

DKell — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:35:16 +0000

To ensure that BBSRC Science remains at the frontier of international competitiveness, I arrange occasional visits abroad, approximately annually, to check this out on the ground (one such was the Big Data mission to the USA). Given the strategic importance to our portfolio of Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy, and the pre-eminence of these countries in fermentations and industrial biotechnology, last week I led a small mission to look at industrial biotechnology in Korea and Japan. Visits in Seoul included meetings with leaders from the Biologics division of Hanwha Chemical, President Kil-Choo Moon and colleagues from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Drs Jong-Hyun Rhie and Tae Hee Kim of the National Research Foundation of Korea, a variety of colleagues from Seoul National University, and – moving more to the translational end – the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology, the Korean Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Korea Drug Development Fund. It was also interesting to note that Samsung is investing heavily in developing a Well Aging Research Centre as part of its Advanced Institute of Technology.

In Daejon we visited the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and in particular its Institute for the BioCentury and the Intelligent Synthetic Biology Center, as well as the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology. Korea also is developing a major series of Institutes for Basic Science, along the lines of the Max Planck Institutes, and we had a very useful briefing on these developments from President Se-Jung Oh and colleagues from the central Institute for Basic Science.

Overall, there was a definite emphasis on multi- and interdisciplinary research (sometimes referred to as ‘convergence’ or ‘fusion’ research) and on technology and innovation, that was clearly paying both scientific and economic dividends. It was also pleasing to see systems biology and modelling to the fore, and overall our own strategy in Industrial Biotechnology bore many similarities to some of the developments being pursued here.

In Japan we had meetings and visits only in greater Tokyo. The first was with President Nakamura and colleagues from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), an agency with whom we work closely as part of our Japan Partnering Awards. We then had a fascinating visit to the R&D Centre of Ajinomoto, a company that is synonymous with the concept and development of the umami taste and that makes more than a million tons of amino acids every year (using E. coli and corynebacterial fermentations); acetylated and other derivatives of these amino acids are also used in personal care and other products. Another fascinating product (with less microbiological involvement) was their granulated version (hondashi) of the ingredients for dashi, a seafood stock based on smoked bonito shavings and kelp, that provides a wonderful umami taste to food; we were shown the entire process, partly on video but ‘live’ in the factory from the stage of grinding the different amounts of various kinds of oak-smoked bonito. An astonishing amount of innovation over some 35 years had contributed to the present state of the granulated product. Ajinomoto has sponsored an interesting Nature Outlook on Taste and a centenary symposium following the 1909 discovery of umami.

Next week we complete our mission with visits to The Systems Biology Institute, to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and to Kyowa Hakko Kirin. Putting together visits such as this is jolly hard work, and I would like to record our thanks to colleagues in our embassies in both Seoul and Tokyo, as well as those in our own international section, for all their very considerable assistance.

While visiting our embassies, I was reminded of the famous ‘valedictories’ about which I blogged before. It seems that these are now being phased out, but the web still provides access to some very interesting ones, such as a famous one from 1979 on Britain’s relative economic decline by Sir Nicholas Henderson (pdf) that resonates today. Finally, I note an interesting infographic on higher education debt and a blog on genome papers.

Various authors. Nature Outlook: Taste. Nature 486, supp S1-S43. Free full text.
Various authors. Proc 100th Anniversary Symposium of Umami Discovery: the roles of glutamate in taste, gastrointestinal function, metabolism, and physiology. Amer J Clin Nutr 90, 705S-885S. Link to journal.

Evaluations, Gatsby and partnerships

DKell — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:47:23 +0000

As previously, this is the season of internal evaluations of the activities and achievements of Swindon Office Directors during the last year (though since the governance changes I provide only advisory comments on Directors of our Institutes enjoying sustainable support), and I carried out a number of these.

We had, after a long gap, another meeting with the Gatsby Foundation and Two Blades, and I had a very helpful 1:1 meeting with Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts.

Among other partnership meetings, were one with colleagues from IBERS, and the first (for me) at the University of Bristol since the launch of our strategic partnership with them. It was of much interest to see the new Life Sciences Building, and to hear about a variety of multidisciplinary activities, including a highly topical paper in synthetic biology.

What may be a record number of people who have or have had BBSRC funding were elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society this year. Many congratulations to them all on this signal honour.

I was honoured to be awarded an Honorary Lifetime Fellowship of the Metabolomics Society, at whose 2013 meeting I am giving a Plenary Lecture.

Finally this week, I note the pre-announcement of a call for Multi-disciplinary research centres in synthetic biology.

Fletcher JM, Harniman RL, Barnes FR, Boyle AL, Collins A, Mantell J, Sharp TH, Antognozzi M, Booth PJ, Linden N, Miles MJ, Sessions RB, Verkade P, Woolfson DN: Self-assembling cages from coiled-coil peptide modules. Science 2013; 340:595-599.

MRC, e-science, ABPI and partnerships

DKell — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:14:03 +0000

The first external meeting of the week was to fulfil, with Director of Science Prof Melanie Welham, an invitation to discuss areas of mutual scientific interest with the Strategy Board of the Medical Research Council. These included bioinformatics and e-science, systems and synthetic biology, nutrition and health, vaccinology and antimicrobials, all areas where our communities have complementary strengths and where we might well seek to develop some joint initiatives.

We had a meeting of our own Research Advisory Panel (consisting of the chairs of our Research Committees and Strategy Panels) the very next day, where among other topics we discussed the extent to which e-science might need some highlights or special notices, or whether any increase in our activities might continue unimpeded via the Exploiting New Ways of Working funding schemes and through responsive mode. The general feeling was that such proposals would not be disadvantaged by continuing as we are, though given that this is a highly promising area (with significant Government interest via the E-Infrastructure Leadership Council) we shall continue to monitor the volume of (both successful and unsuccessful) applications.

We had a useful “6-monthly” meeting with Director-General of Knowledge and Innovation Sir John O’Reilly and BIS colleagues from the Research Base, and I attended the annual meeting of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries, where we were addressed by (among others) Lord (‘Freddie’) Howe and Professor Brian Cox.

Finally, we had Partnership meetings with colleagues from the Institute of Food Research and from the Roslin Institute, where we were able to catch up with some excellent scientific and other highlights.

Papers I noted this week included one on hybrid grasses whose root structures effectively increase soil porosity and decrease run-off substantially, with huge potential to mitigate flooding, one on computational techniques for omics data, and a salutary review on statistical powering.

Berger B, Peng J, Singh M: Computational solutions for omics data. Nat Rev Genet 2013; 14:333-346
Button KS, Ioannidis JPA, Mokrysz C, Nosek BA, Flint J, Robinson ES, Munafò MR: Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci 2013; 14:365-376
Macleod CJA, Humphreys MW, Whalley WR, Turner L, Binley A, Watts CW, Skøt L, Joynes A, Hawkins S, King IP, O’Donovan S & Haygarth PM (2013) A novel grass hybrid to reduce flood generation in temperate regions. Scientific Rep doi:10.1038/srep01683. Full free text

Infrastructures, open access and CSaP

DKell — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:19:12 +0000

The week started with the latest meeting of the e-infrastructure leadership Council, co-chaired by Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts, where the main items centred around developing the details of our strategies for e-science. A second and very interesting meeting on infrastructures, organised by the Foundation for Science and Technology, was addressed by Sir John Armitt, Professor Brian Collins, and Tim Yeo MP, each giving some very insightful perspectives on UK large infrastructure needs, how they might better be joined up, and how we need to increase their recognition as a public good that transcends typical parliamentary timescales, and needs a clearer recognition of the extent to which the private sector can provide that.

I appeared with others before the Business, Innovation and Skills Commons Select Committee to discuss Open Access (and note the new RCUK guidelines, also as pdf). These meetings are streamed live, and then made available via the internet; our session starts at about 10-49 into the video that may be viewed here.

I was also able to attend much of the annual meeting of the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy, where (for these sessions) the focus was on inculcating academic thinking and scientific rigour into policymaking, an analysis of systems approaches to ageing, and a Panel discussion of the evidence and policy, with the first keynote being given by Sir Mark Walport setting out some of this thoughts on the next 5 years as Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and the final one by Sir Bob Kerslake – Head of the Home Civil Service – rehearsing the main elements of where science policy should contribute to Civil Service Reform (and vice versa). It was notable in one session on the systems approach to ageing populations that the rather advanced and integrated software strategies of the systems biology community, including the use of standardised XML-based data models (such as those encoded in SBML), and those incorporating the relevant ontologies, have not yet been adopted by systems modellers in the social sciences.

Among papers I noted this week, was one on the use of analytical metabolomics to determine food intake in an unbiased manner (relative to the claims typically made by subjects in the previous ‘gold standard’ known as Food Frequency Questionnaires), a fascinating piece on electroceuticals, a couple of rightly scary pieces by Duncan Clark in the Guardian and in Science on climate change, and the sequencing of the (African) coelacanth and zebrafish genomes (the latter showing that 70% of human ‘disease genes’ have a human counterpart, useful for phenotypic screening).

With Google’s earlier announcement that its digital feed reader would not be supported after July 1st, my attention was drawn to Feedly, which seems to have all of the functionality I require and thus will now adopt. I also noted a useful PLoS collection of Open Access papers on Text Mining (an area in which a new paper has just been accepted).

Amemiya CT et mult al.: The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution. Nature 2013; 496:311-316
Courtot M et mult al. (2011). Controlled vocabularies and semantics in Systems Biology. Mol Syst Biol 7, 543. Full, free text.
Famm K, Litt B, Tracey KJ, Boyden ES, Slaoui M: Drug discovery: a jump-start for electroceuticals. Nature; 496:159-161
Howe K et mult al.: The zebrafish reference genome sequence and its relationship to the human genome. Nature 2013
Kell DB (2013) Finding novel pharmaceuticals in the systems biology era using multiple effective drug targets, phenotypic screening, and knowledge of transporters: where drug discovery went wrong and how to fix it. FEBS J, :in the press. Accepted ms
Menni, C. et mult al. (2013) Targeted metabolomics profiles are strongly correlated with nutritional patterns in women. Metabolomics 9, 506-514. Full free text
Miwa M, Ohta T, Rak R, Rowley A, Kell DB, Pyysalo S and Ananiadou S (2013) A method for integrating and ranking the evidence for biochemical pathways by mining reactions from text. Bioinformatics, in the press
Shakhashiri BZ, Bell JA: Climate change conversations. Science 2013; 340:9

Bioenergy, Open access, drug discovery and e-science

DKell — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:46:30 +0000

My initial meeting last week was a very pleasant trip to listen to part of the annual symposium of the BSBEC consortium. I am not going to pick out any specific talks or posters (for which I presented the prizes), as that would be egregious, but I can safely comment – as did members of the Scientific Advisory Board – that there is very exciting and world-leading work being done here, that has the potential to improve yields, conversions and processes significantly.

I then spoke at and attended most of a very interesting meeting entitled “Rigour and Openness in 21st Century science”, looking a range of issues surrounding Open Access and Open Data and the changes that online digital access and novel tools can effect in the effective communication of scientific data, information and knowledge. The opening keynote was given (and indeed represented the first public speech) by new Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport, while the closing lecture was given by Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts.

I rehearsed some of the issues of systems biology, drug discovery and e-science in an online video produced by the Beilstein organisation, and in an Open Access review article representing a kind of manifesto for the pharmaceuticals industry. I was also pleased to note that our community-driven reconstruction of human metabolism was chosen as this month’s NIGMS Director’s Featured Research Advance.

I also enjoyed Data Visualisation ‘aha’ moments, a blog on how to write better abstracts, a nice blog piece on, and an amusing ‘back-from-the-future’ look at, the degree of obsolescence of the conventional academic paper as the fundamental sharable description of a piece of research, and a little piece on ‘the importance of stupidity in scientific research’. However, much of the weekend was spent preparing for an appearance at the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee enquiry into Open Access, involving the reading of many hundreds of pages of written evidence.

Kell DB: Finding novel pharmaceuticals in the systems biology era using multiple effective drug targets, phenotypic screening, and knowledge of transporters: where drug discovery went wrong and how to fix it. FEBS J 2013:in the press. Full free text as preprint.
Schwartz MA: The importance of stupidity in scientific research. J Cell Sci 2008; 121:1771. Full free text.
Thiele I, Swainston N, et mult. al.: A community-driven global reconstruction of human metabolism. Nature Biotechnol 2013: in the press.

Open data, fostering innovation, UK-CDS, industrial biotechnology and beautiful science

DKell — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:35:38 +0000

One of last week’s major meetings was one of our periodic gatherings of the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, where among other aspects I rehearsed the benefits of Open Access (mentioned last week) for Lower Income Countries.

I enjoyed a talk at the British Library from Nigel Shadbolt on Open Data, was taken through the library’s activities in providing persistent DOIs for datasets (DataCite) and an environmental science resource called Envia. On Open Access, I noted a discussion on the importance of appropriate licensing throughout Europe and elsewhere, and participated in a video about the RCUK Open Access policy.

I was delighted to attend, and to present the prizes, at our Fifth “Innovator of the Year” Awards, entitled ‘Fostering Innovation’, which this year included a new ‘Activating Impact’ competition and the launch of the new Excellence with Impact scheme. Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts gave an excellent speech, and trailed the likelihood of some funding for the Agri-Tech strategy as part of the Budget announcements

In January BBSRC launched a call for cross-disciplinary, community building Networks in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy (NIBB). The Networks will foster collaborative activities between academic researchers and business at all levels to identify and develop new approaches to tackle major research challenges and help deliver key benefits in industrial biotechnology. This will be through the application of a range of approaches, including genomic, systems and synthetic biology as well as the underpinning sciences such as biochemistry, enzymology, metabolism and microbiology.

The Networks are currently being developed by the academic community through an open forum on _connect. This enables the widest possible community, including industry, to shape the direction of the Networks prior to their establishment. A substantial number of Networks have now been proposed on _connect and BBSRC encourages comments from industry on the Network discussions to help shape their development before the closing date of 16 April. Being a member of a Network will allow industry access to the activities they will run, to meet academics, and to help develop collaborative proposals for a variety of funding sources. Membership of a Network is required to access the joint BBSRC-TSB £25M Industrial Biotechnology (IB) catalyst. However, while the Networks will continue be open to new members after they are awarded, now is a key time to help shape their directions.

I was very pleased to see that the Government response to Lord Heseltine’s growth report included an acceptance of its recommendation 39, that “The Government should continue to commit to the long term stability of the core funding of science and research, at a level which keeps pace with our international competitors”. I also noted the output (external pdf) of the Commons Select Committee enquiry into the difficulties of commercializing research.

Catching up with Athene Donald’s blog, I noted a couple of interesting pieces on aspects of leadership and on choosing where to publish and why. I also enjoyed an interesting piece by Bloomberg on renewable reserves, a fascinating piece showing that despite the very large sums paid to casino market traders a random strategy performs just as well as them (as trailed), and with lower risk, and would point up a quantitative approach to quality control in certain types of synthetic biology.

Because of the imminence of Easter there will likely be a gap before the next blog; let me take the opportunity to wish a happy holiday to all.

Biondo AE, Pluchino A, Rapisarda A, Helbing D, 2013: Are random trading strategies more successful than technical ones? Full text pdf preprint at ArXiv.
Mutalik VK, Guimaraes JC, Cambray G, Mai QA, Christoffersen MJ, Martin L, Yu A, Lam C, Rodriguez C, Bennett G, Keasling JD, Endy D, Arkin AP: Quantitative estimation of activity and quality for collections of functional genetic elements. Nat Methods 2013.

Inflammation, Council, Sir Mark Walport and TSB

DKell — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:51:38 +0000

The week started by attending a symposium to mark the opening of the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research, a research centre co-funded (to the tune of £5M each) by Astrazeneca and GSK – implying the highly pre-competitive nature (one might say ‘lack of understanding’) of this space. Inflammation seems like an area ripe for a systems approach.

We had the calendar year’s first meeting of Council, where the main theme was strategic planning, from the light touch refresh of the Strategic Plan to rehearsing and developing both nearer-term plans and those – a subject of our summer strategic meeting – that are likely to be longer term.

I attended an enjoyable reflective symposium and celebration to mark 10 years of Sir Mark Walport’s leadership of the Wellcome Trust, as he moves to become the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser. One of the topics mentioned was Open Access, where Sir Mark has exhibited considerable leadership.

It is always possible to find a reference that claims that a particular point of view is true, and one of the hallmarks of good science involves reviewing and weighing the balance of evidence appropriately. Thus one reason for scientists to publish Open Access is known as the Open Access Citation Advantage (OACA), based on the undemanding idea or proposition that if more folk can read your paper they are more likely to cite it. I am sometimes told – especially by those with a vested interest in claiming it – that (when relevant confounding factors are controlled) there is no OACA, but the balance of literature is overwhelmingly of the view that there is often a very considerable Open Access Citation Advantage. Annotated bibliographies are here and here, and a meta-analysis from 2010 here. In agriculture and in other fields where many readers are from countries that cannot afford library subscriptions, the OACA is several-fold. So, if gaining more citations is your goal, Open Access can definitely help.

We had a very useful regular bilateral with the Technology Strategy Board, discussing in particular Industrial Biotechnology and the Agri-tech strategy.

Finally, RCUK published a very nice booklet on the way we are Investing in Innovation (pdf).

Evans JA, Reimer J: Open access and global participation in science. Science 2009; 323:1025.
Kousha K, Abdoli M: The citation impact of Open Access agricultural research. A comparison between OA and non-OA publications. Online Inf Rev 2010; 34:772-785. Full free text as pdf

Agriculture, leavings and open access

DKell — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:14:29 +0000

The week started with a joint Manchester-Brazil meeting on bioenergy and industrial biotechnology, where I learnt in particular about an enormous metagenomics programme at the Brazilian Centre for Bioethanol Science and Technology. Other Agriculture-related meetings included one with Mary Creagh, the Shadow Environment Secretary and one hosted at the Royal Society for the Governing Board of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI).

I spoke at a meeting (pdf) of the Foundation for Science and Technology on the RCUK implementation of Open Access publishing based on the Finch report (Dame Janet Finch was one of the other speakers). With great timeliness, RCUK had earlier that day published its updated Open Access guidance, on which comments are being sought until March 20th. I also contributed to a video that BioMed Central are putting together on Open Access (a link will be given anon).

I attended two external leaving parties, one for Sir Roland Jackson who was finishing at the British Science Association and one for Imran Khan who is leaving the Campaign for Science and Engineering to replace him. We also had the first of a number of events to mark the retirement of Peter Swinburne from BBSRC.

Press releases included one on the human metabolic network reconstruction that I trailed last week, and one – that attracted considerable media coverage – on our fast-tracked funding for studies of ash dieback.

Papers I enjoyed included one on a metabolomic signature of ageing in mice, while there was also a well-publicised article on the negative health effects of eating ‘processed’ meat in quantity; for me the suspicion falls on iron liberated from haem. I also came upon a very interesting (2011) paper on bioactive natural products taxonomy.

Finally, I enjoyed and would recommend a succinct blog summary by Sang Yup Lee on “How could biotechnology improve your life?” – in quite a number of ways.

Kell DB: Iron behaving badly: inappropriate iron chelation as a major contributor to the aetiology of vascular and other progressive inflammatory and degenerative diseases. BMC Medical Genomics 2009; 2:2 Full, free text
Rohrmann, S et mult al. Meat consumption and mortality – results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. BMC Medicine 11, 63: doi:10.1186/1741-7015-11-63 (Full free ms)
Thiele I et mult al.: A community-driven global reconstruction of human metabolism. Nature Biotechnol 2013:in the press. Full text
Tomás-Loba A, de Jesus BB, Mato JM, Blasco MA: A metabolic signature predicts biological age in mice. Aging Cell 2013; 12:93-101
Zhu F, Qin C, Tao L, Liu X, Shi Z, Ma X, Jia J, Tan Y, Cui C, Lin J, Tan C, Jiang Y, Chen Y: Clustered patterns of species origins of nature-derived drugs and clues for future bioprospecting. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2011; 108:12943-12948. Full free text

Babraham, science-art and open access

DKell — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:33:52 +0000

Last week saw a number of meetings connected with the Babraham Institute. In the first I performed the official opening of the new ‘Building 570’ that brings together a majority of Babraham scientists, including both experimentalists and those involved in computational biology. In addition, we had one of our regular Institute Partnership meetings, reviewing progress against BBSRC-funded strategic programmes and other issues.

I enjoyed an interesting exhibition at the British Library on Science, Art and Data Visualisation, as well as a networking meeting for various of the BIS partner bodies where I had a useful discussion with Jim Milne from the Royal Society of Chemistry about their imaginative and exciting innovations in Open Access Publishing. Here is a useful link to part of the European debate about some of the benefits that Open Access will provide, and that we need to ensure are not stymied.

I had a useful meeting with Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust (and incoming Government Chief Scientific Adviser), and enjoyed a networking meeting to celebrate 10 years of the present incarnation of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

I was reminded of an important study of the enormous returns on investment in agricultural research, and I enjoyed an interesting piece on “Three Ways to Think Deeply at Work”.

Two of my own articles have just become available, the first on drug promiscuity and transporters in final form, and a new one – taking forward the community approach to building highly curated and semantically enriched systems biology models that we pioneered in yeast – to provide the most complete reconstruction of human metabolism. It is freely available in SBML.

Finally, I would draw attention to the fact that BBSRC is carrying out a ‘light touch’ refresh of our Strategic Plan, and that there is an open invitation here to contribute to this refresh.

Herrgård MJ, et mult al.: A consensus yeast metabolic network obtained from a community approach to systems biology. Nature Biotechnol 2008; 26:1155-1160
Kell DB, Dobson PD, Bilsland E, Oliver SG: The promiscuous binding of pharmaceutical drugs and their transporter-mediated uptake into cells: what we (need to) know and how we can do so. Drug Disc Today 2013: 18, 218-239
Thiele I, et mult al.: A community-driven global reconstruction of human metabolism. Nature Biotechnol 2013: in the press. Link to full text

Professor Douglas Kell's blog

Biotechnology, biologicals and banking

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

Biotechnology in Korea and Japan

13 May 2013

Research showcase, environmental monitoring and synthetic biology

11 February 2013

Nitrogen, the autumn statement, executive meetings and new ways of working

10 December 2012

Energy, the Russell group, Research Advisory Panel and the Research Environment

29 October 2012

European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology, and Systems Biology in Switzerland

22 October 2012

Biotechnology in Korea and Japan

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

Open data, fostering innovation, UK-CDS, industrial biotechnology and beautiful science

25 March 2013

Agriculture, leavings and open access

11 March 2013

Institutes, agri-tech and tuberculosis

25 February 2013

Industrial Biotechnology, Research Advisory Panel and strategies

28 January 2013

Council, Rothamsted, GSK and climate change

17 December 2012

Evaluations, Gatsby and partnerships

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

Strategies, Fellows, technology and food

12 September 2011

That was the week that was…and the year

14 December 2009

How systems work (or not) – economics, delivery and more (…or some of what I read in the holidays)

04 January 2009

To blogin at the bloginning

12 November 2008

Industrial Biotechnology, Research Advisory Panel and strategies

28 January 2013

MRC, e-science, ABPI and partnerships

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

Inflammation, Council, Sir Mark Walport and TSB

18 March 2013

Research showcase, environmental monitoring and synthetic biology

11 February 2013

Audit Board, Lords Open Access, Council and BioIndustry

04 February 2013

Defra, open access and planning

14 January 2013

Oxford farming, open access and Honours

07 January 2013

Infrastructures, open access and CSaP

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

E-infrastructure, pharmacokinetics, announcements and synthetic biology

12 November 2012

Ageing, roots and farming

19 July 2010

Bioenergy, Open access, drug discovery and e-science

15 April 2013

Inflammation, Council, Sir Mark Walport and TSB

18 March 2013

Agriculture, leavings and open access

11 March 2013

Bioenergy, Open access, drug discovery and e-science

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

Energy, the Russell group, Research Advisory Panel and the Research Environment

29 October 2012

Sustainability, BSBEC, capital equipment and Newcastle

23 April 2012

Open data, science and celebrations

13 June 2011

Greenhouse gases in agriculture, ministers, genomics and data

07 March 2011

Pharmaceuticals, Food, Biofuels and Purdah

29 March 2010

Open data, fostering innovation, UK-CDS, industrial biotechnology and beautiful science

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):

IB strategy, impact, making science work, and digital organisms

25 June 2012

Capturing and using digital information

08 August 2011

e-infrastructure, networks and change