Tens of thousands of research papers are published annually. Among this mass, it is important to be able to judge the value of individual efforts to the future of health care, science and technology development. Who is really doing critical work? According to leading scientific publishers and analysts, ISB is.
Thompson Scientific, a widely noted gauge of research productivity, announced earlier this year that ISB ranks 6th in global research impact. ISB's high score reflects the average number of times ISB-authored articles were cited in the publications of other investigators between 2002 and 2006.
In addition, responses to recently published ISB research indicate that our scientists' work will continue to rank at the top.
In December, Associate Professor Nitin Baliga, PhD and Richard Bonneau, PhD, of New York University (Affiliate Faculty, ISB), and colleagues published an article in Cell about a new model they developed that accurately predicts molecular-level responses of living cells to genetic and environmental changes. This ability is critical if ISB researchers and others are to re-engineer diseased cells back to health or engineer organisms for improved bioenergy production.Reviewers lauded the article in widely read journals such as Nature Methods, Nature Reviews — Microbiology and Science. Nature Reviews — Microbiology reported, for example, that Baliga and Bonneau's work "showcases the power of systems approaches for rapidly analyzing the biology of sequenced microorganisms."
In February ISB researchers Matti Nykter, PhD, post doctoral fellow, Ilya Schmulevich, PhD, a ssociate professor, and colleagues published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that addresses criticality in biological systems. Critical systems maintain a balance between stability and the ability to adapt to change. Nature Reviews — Genetics subsequently reported that the article presented "the strongest evidence provided to date for criticality in biological systems."
Research is all about information. Finding, gathering, generating, predicting, surmising, analyzing, concluding (not necessarily in that order)...that's what scientists do.
The gathering part can be inordinately time consuming. The most advanced molecular research often involves the rather antiquated and inefficient process of cutting and pasting to ensure that all the data necessary is aggregated in one spot.
Information regarding one gene is in database A, a target protein can be found in database B and cell type information from a model organism is in yet another database on yet another site. So instead of spending time designing and implementing experiments that generate data to change the world scientists spend their time hunting and pecking on a computer.
To address this ubiquitous challenge, ISB researchers developed the Innate Immune Database (IIDB), which provides open access to ISB research findings for immunologists around the world. In a paper published in the March edition of BioMed Central (BMC) Immunology, co-author and ISB Senior Scientist Alistair Rust and colleagues described the unique nature of the database.
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Reviewing gene expression profiles (top left) Innate Immune Database
The database homepage (bottom)
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