The price of freedom

R. EILS, D. GERLICH, J. ELLENBERG

Nuts and bolts: these microscopy images showing how chromosomal material is split during cell division have been used to generate a mathematical model of the process.

Although researchers may benefit from such autonomy, most consider project funding to be inadequate. Many of the larger grants have allowed new institutes to be built, but few grants address the large-scale nature of systems-biology projects. "Right now, funding is a challenge," says Steve Wiley, director of the Biomolecular Systems Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, who says that he has stitched together funding from the US Department of Energy, the National Center for Research Resources and numerous little grants to "fill in the gaps". This patchwork of government grants, trusts and private donations can make it tough for an institute to launch a robust systems-biology programme.

But scientists remain optimistic. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the energy department are increasing their funding of systems biology. Under the NIH's long-term funding plan, for example, $7.4 million will be spent on initiatives, including two to four new centres. The NSF has earmarked $4 million for quantitative systems-biology research in 2004 for the first of three years.

Keyed in: researchers at the German Cancer Research Center discuss a computer model of cell processes.

Wiley, however, is concerned that systems-biology programmes are growing faster than the funding agencies' award structures. There is no way that a systems-biology programme could be funded by a single, investigator-initiated grant, he says.

The Japanese government, meanwhile, has provided funding for the Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, and the recently launched Solution Oriented Research for Science and Technology Project. Hiroaki Kitano, who founded both groups, says that they are approaching systems biology from both the silicon and the cellular sides. They are working on two computer tools — systems biology mark-up language (SBML) and systems biology workbench (SBW) — that should make research more efficient, says Kitano. He hopes to hire a few experimental researchers this year.

Europe's foray into systems biology has long lagged behind the United States and Japan, but European researchers are at last receiving some government support. Germany is doing most: both national and regional governments have recently unveiled systems-biology programmes. The education ministry will put 20 million (US$25 million) into a national programme dedicated to the liver cell. "We decided to go with one model system that will have the most relevance for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries," says Eils. With an anticipated 78 federally funded positions to be filled by the end of the year — many at postdoc or faculty level — Germany may become the destination of choice for international researchers.

The German regional programme, boosted by the private support from the Klaus Tschira Foundation, will distribute 1.5 million annually among five centres, including the University of Heidelberg, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, also based in Heidelberg, and the German Cancer Research Center, each of which will see a new research group established later this year. In 2007, the groups will move to the Bioquant research network centre, a newly proposed institute to be affiliated with the University of Heidelberg.

Safe haven

In Britain, the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre is scheduled to open in 2005. The institute will be the first large-scale centre of its kind in the country. The £35-million (US$64-million) initiative has had large contributions from the charitable organizations the Wellcome Trust and the Wolfson Foundation. More than 500 staff, including up to 85 investigators, will pool their talents to study systems biology from the nano to the macro levels (see Nature 425, 430–433; 2003).

John McCarthy, the academic coordinator of the biocentre, sees its role as providing a haven for researchers. "A lot of people with a quantitative background don't want to move into a traditional mainstream biology department because they won't have the right environment to develop what they are working on," he says.

Finland and the Netherlands are also entering the fray. The Academy of Finland and the country's national technology agency, Tekes, have jointly funded SYSBIO, a 10-million, four-year systems-biology and bioinformatics programme that will include about 50 positions, mainly for PhD and postdoc students. Dutch universities, including the Free University of Amsterdam, are beginning to collaborate with one another and with multinational companies, such as Unilever, to develop drugs, to understand diabetes and sleeping sickness — and to brew a better beer.

The flurry of job openings provides people interested in systems biology with international opportunities. "I am absolutely certain that we will rely on international applications," says Eils. "We don't have enough people here in Germany to fill these positions." Whereas the popularity of molecular-biology programmes has blossomed in the United States, it is the opposite in Europe, where graduates are more likely to have degrees in physiology and cell biology. Theoretical mathematicians from Eastern Europe, where molecular biology remains strong, may find themselves being wooed by US institutions.

But Eils suspects that interest will shift again and the tide will turn in a few years. "If we wait for another five years, we will have more people, especially in the field of biology, with additional training in the theoretical side," he says. "It's already happening."