When I was an undergraduate starting out on my Biology major, I didn’t have any preconceived notions about what branch of the life sciences I might ultimately favor. Oberlin College offered only a liberal arts degree in Biology – not only was it impossible to specialize further, but students were encouraged to explore the whole spectrum of biology from Anatomy to Zoology (and required to take many credits outside of the sciences altogether, for which I am still grateful).
Although I enjoyed my ‘macro’ courses in population genetics, evolution, ecology, botany and the like, I quickly fell in love with the molecular world. Working my way through classes with names such as Molecular Genetics, Genetics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Immunology, Virology and Biochemistry, at first I just saw them as complementary studies that both overlapped and differed in interesting ways. It was my parents, though, who caused me to question the nomenclature of the various subdisciplines of biology: they wanted to know, simply enough, what I was, so they could tell their neighbors and friends what their daughter was shaping up to be.
When they first asked, I told them that I wanted to be a molecular geneticist. This was probably because at the time, I was embroiled in a course by the same name and humming with the history of the Phage Group, the lac operon and everything that happened afterwards. The following year, I decided I was a molecular biologist, for equally opportunistic reasons. But ultimately the term virologist won out. Although I studied viruses in graduate school, it was in a department called Microbiology. I abandoned viruses in my first post-doc, and so suddenly found myself in need of a new name: cell biologist seemed the most appropriate for the cancer cell signalling I was investigating, although I didn’t do a lot with whole, intact cells. Later when I went back to viruses, I was doing more biochemistry than anything else, so all pretence at classification slipped away.
Somewhere during this ten-year span, something very intriguing was happening with the nomenclature of biological subdisciplines. In earlier days, there wasn’t much mixing. Biochemists studied proteins, often in isolation from cells; cell biologists did the reverse. Molecular biologists performed a lot of cloning, studying how proteins interacted with nucleic acid to turn genes on and off. Geneticists used model organisms to study processes with only scanty reference to the fact that proteins were actually carrying things out: genes were ‘upstream’ or ‘downstream’, they ‘enhanced’ or ‘suppressed’ – but when I listened to geneticists giving seminars, it seemed they had little interest in what their gene products were actually doing in cells – questions about binding partners, localization, even predicted structures and domains, were often greeted with a disinterested shrug.
But at some point, the boundaries started to blur: disciplines had become tools and techniques, almost without anyone noticing. Geneticists were isolating proteins from their animals, and cloning constructs to make transgenics; cell biologists were using the methods of biochemistry to get a handle on how signalling influenced physical forms, or making a knockout mouse to discover the consequences of their pet gene’s absence in vivo, or dabbling in computational biology or bioinformatics to gain added insights. Soon, no self-respecting biologist wouldn’t be mixing the methods of most of the previous inviolate subdisciplines, matching technique to objective instead of forcing objectives into a limited set of traditional techniques.
And when that happened, all the old names went out the window. Biochemistry used to be synonymous with enzyme kinetics; now it’s also a suite of techniques that everyone does: Western blot, immunoprecipitation, proteomics, kinase assays. Molecular biology is just a plasmid workhorse, a means to another end. I have noticed that, hand in hand with these changes, academic departments have been discreetly changing their names. Descriptive terms like Anatomy and Embryology have been phased out. Some departments attempted to deal with the blurring of boundaries by merging discipline names: Cell and Molecular Biology; Biochemistry and Cell Biology; Cell and Developmental Biology; Structural Biology and Biophysics – you can find all the permutations, uneasily shoulder-to-shoulder and not quite sure exactly what they stand for. As the following promotional blurb from UCL’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology demonstrates, any pretence at true compartmentalization seems to have been lost:
The structural biology of proteins and enzymes to the mechanism of amphibian limb regeneration; from the regulation of transcription of genes involved in drug metabolism to the uncovering of gene function in Mycobacterium tuberculosis; from understanding the signalling of insulin receptors to the computer analysis of whole genomes sequences, this department provides an exciting venue in which to realise the promise of these important goals.
I still don’t know what to call myself. When pressed, I usually mumble cell biologist, but it never feels quite right – especially as I infinitely prefer biochemistry.
Nicely put, Jenny.
I always had great trouble describing myself to other scientists (“I’m a molecular cell biologist. But I also do protein chemistry and structural biology. X-Ray and NMR”). Trying to sum it all up to ordinary people… I used to wimp out as say ‘biomedical research’ even if it wasn’t strictly true.
I have for years maintained all those labels were merely describing the tools — a bit like a carpenter saying “I’m a hammerer”. Deeply unsatisfying. I’d use whatever tool I needed to answer an interesting biological question, which lack of specialization probably meant I was unemployable towards the end but I had a hell of a good time.
My mom was upset when, after six years in chemistry, I said (by way of explanation) that I could also be a biologist. She thought it meant that I was going to just throw away all the years I spent doing whatever I did, unaware that (bio)chemistry and (molecular) biology are pretty interchangeable.
I suppose your interest in language sparked this. It’s a topic close to my heart as well. I didn’t understand these terms until I went to grad school. I basically came to the conclusion that these terms mean techniques, not disciplines, which was an aha moment. Geneticists do crosses; biochemists work with proteins.
‘Cell biology’ is probably the most nebulous term. From a methods standpoint, you can say the cell biologist’s tool is the microscope. But I think it cell biology still refers to a discipline, in the sense that we study fundamental cellular processes common to many cell types (e.g. cell division, endocytosis, signaling).
‘Systems biology’ refers to the study of complex networks, genome-scale data, that sort of thing.
‘Biophysicists’ tend to do one of two things. They either study forces in single molecule assays, or they do some kind of material science/nanotechnology experiment (e.g. coupling proteins to tiny little beads and then sticking them where they don’t belong). They’re a little like bioengineers in that way.
Nice post Jenny. I agree that most of the words can be exchanged depending on what one wants to say.
I tend to look at myself as a microbiologist. I guess I could call myself “biotechnologist” or “molecular cellbiologist” or former “biochemist” (since I worked a lot with proteins and stuff like that) but I tend to look at my research from the bacterial point of view…. not really the cell (although I am moving into that area with alarming speed).
Then of course, a part of me is probably a bit snobbish* since I am proud of having a connection with bacteria and viruses… and I love them. (Cells are surely interesting too but still my fascination is with these prokaryotes who can live everywhere.)
*my oldold professor who was one of the first I met at uni was a very proud microbiologist. Early training I guess… 🙂
Oh, I thought it’s now Organismics. But then I remembered we already have a name for it – Physiology.
But I think it cell biology still refers to a discipline, in the sense that we study fundamental cellular processes common to many cell types
I think that the fly geneticists in my lab would say that this is what they are studying too.
Åsa, I think Microbiology is one of those terms that knows much more what it is — although sometimes the virologists are lumped in too, as they were where I did my PhD, and sometimes they aren’t. (_Ghettoized_ might be the more accurate term — in the novel I’m working on at the moment, I’m exploring the idea of virology being an old-fashioned backwater in the life sciences.)
In a book I once reviewed for Bioessays (Designs for Life by Soraya de Chadarevian), it explored the interesting thesis that the term ‘molecular biology’ was purposefully coined after the Second World War to distance what was known then as “biophysics” from the horrors of the atom bomb, to focus on life instead of death. It wasn’t so much a PR exercise as an affirmation of what all these physicists wanted to do with their future work.
Talking of PR exercises, my previous department used to be called ‘Biochemistry’, but then went all trendy and market-led and became the ‘School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences’.
As my BA (despite my self-descriptors above) is in Biochemistry, I find this, also, unsatisfying. It’s also too long to fit on address forms.
I worked at the now defunct “Institut d’Embryologie Cellulaire et Moleculaire” and got my Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular (Developmental, in the French version) Biology.
My current group is part of an unwieldy human genetics structure that used to be called “Genetic pediatric handicaps” and had to be renamed, and is now “Génétique et épigénétique des maladies métaboliques, neurosensorielles et du développement” (Genetics and epigenetics of metabolic, neurosensorial [!] and developmental diseases).
This is what happens when you decide on a group name by committee. No one has the least clue what it means. I have called myself a “molecular embryologist” without embarrassment, though, while my colleagues usually content themselves with “geneticist” or “molecular biologist”.
All that was – I think you’re right. They are techniques now. I’m proud to work cross-boundaries like that (except I haven’t tried proteomics personally; I usually have too little primary matter).
Your department name sounds a lot nicer in French than in English!
Developmental Biology is a term that I think is more settled than most. It is not bound by techniques, and it embraces both a modus operandi and an overarching theme.
Everything sounds nicer in French. Even industrial action.
Just pity the poor classifier/indexer trying to keep up with these changes. I gave up trying to discern the differences some time ago and plumped for “Molecular Cell Biology”.
I like this editorial by Arthur Kornberg from 10 years ago, where talks about the change from microbe hunters to vitamin hunters, then to enzyme hunters and gene hunters. He ends by asking whether we will move on to head hunters! A relic of this transition is left in the title of that great series Methods in Enzymology. Now it covers just about everything under the sun, not just enzymes.
@Bora – physiology?!?!? Well, I think it is supposed to be due for a comeback, now the moleculists have had their crack of the whip.
Frank, I think Molecular Cell Biology is a fabulous term, one which would adequately describe at least half a dozen departments here at UCL.
Someone was saying the other day that the journal Developmental Cell is starting to take lots of biochemistry/signalling sorts of papers, which is a big departure for it. I guess the broader your remit, the more you can trawl the world for the best papers no matter what their topic.
Hm… my undergraduate degree was in the fabulously-named Programme in Molecular Genetics and Molecular Biology, which more or less describes what I learned, at least in the last year or so. Somehow I also picked up a major in Human Biology, which I’m still scratching my head over, since I only ever took one course in Human Genetics (and a six-week elective in my first year). I’ll have to ask Eva I guess.
My PhD is from the Molecular and Medical Genetics department (which used to be part of Medical Biophysics, go figure). MMG, predictably, also included a lot of carbohydrate structure people and crystallographers, whom I suspect were deeply unsatisfied with the name. It then absorbed Microbiology, which I also suspect caused a case of indigestion.
Now I’m in the Division of Genetics and Genome Biology, which is a nicely broad definition and encompasses a lot (but not all) of the research that takes place here. It used to be the Department of Genetics, which was of course inaccurate since a lot of the scientific staff didn’t do, or in some cases know, any genetics.
We could, of course, just say we study Omics, and leave it at that. But I really don’t want to.
Jenny> Åsa, I think Microbiology is one of those terms that knows much more what it is — although sometimes the virologists are lumped in too, as they were where I did my PhD, and sometimes they aren’t.
haha, it never occured to me that virology wouldn’t be included. (clearly I even think of bacterial viruses since phages was part of my phd…) I have to admit that I more often think virus & bacteria than v&b&fungi when I think of microbiology… then I remember the cheese and wine and the horrible fungi infections you can get in the lungs ^^
Ghettoized might be the more accurate term
interesting choice of words. I have to say that there are smaller [and sometimes bigger] rivalry betweeen different ‘sub’sections of various subjects. The virologist vs bacteriologist(or rather cell people in general) might be part of that old drama “it is not alive – yes it is alive” argument, right?! (not to mention “my things can live on their own, yours can’t” 🙂 )
Frank – I hope so [physiology], as I dimly recollect I have a degree in it.
There are so many boundaries dividing science, boundaries discerning different objects (to study plants, animals, cells, genes, etc.), different styles of inquiry (to experiment, to calculate, to model, etc.), and much more.
Research problems used to draw their legitimacy as a scientific problem from how they fitted snuggly within those boundaries. More recently (WWII and afterwards, roughly), research problems draw their legitimacy from how relevant they are considered to be to those paying for the research (society, in the case of public research; industry, in the case of R&D; some mixture of those, in the case of public-privatte consortium-style science). Social problems or commercial problems are argued not to fit so snuggly between the boundaries that traverse science and thus require some sort of recombination/way of transcending/crossing/overcoming those boundaries.
That way, changing content of fields/disciplines/specialisations, as well as trends towards cooperation & inter/pluri/multi/trans/crossdisciplinarity overlap.
If the character of the problems we study defines what we do, and not the names of buildings or tools, then we can be something else every couple of months, or multiple things simultaneously. And why not? There was a time when I introduced myself as an Evolutionary Molecular Microbiologist. It is much more practical to be a microbiologist, evolutionary biologist and molecular biologist at the same time (depending on whom asks)…
I understand what you are saying, Bart, but equally I think it is dangerous to underestimate the power of names.
it never occurred to me that virology wouldn’t be included
I don’t know any virologist who would submit a paper to the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
Richard: When we see the first Department of Omics start up in a reputable university, I’ll buy you a drink.
Jenny – thank you, but I will be retreating to the top of an isolated mountain somewhere, scanning the horizon for approaching horsemen.
A long and rambling discussion of the “ome” trend, along with a proposal for “omiomics”, can be found here.
Heh. I was hoping you’d remember that conversation—and more to the point, be able to find it.
Happy to oblige. 😉
I should have included a warning:
DISCLAIMER: the above-referenced discussion about “omics” is neither informative, well-articulated, nor necessarily terribly interesting. It is not likely to assist you in defining your role, nor that of any research you may do or be involved in, within the context of super-disciplines (either real or imagined) that may or may not fall within the broader definition of “omics”. The above is provided for informational purposes only and is not represented or guaranteed to be fit for any specific purpose either explicitly stated or implied. Not for use in humans. Your mileage may vary. Batteries not included. E&OE.
Omiomics is a great word. But I fear in coining it, you may actually have helped bring it into life.
The power of names and naming things. Do not underestimate it.
In yet another occurrence of being unable to read Jenny’s post titles at first glance, I keep reading “In which disciples become technicians” on my snapshot page. My imagination is running wild here, with two-thousand-year-old laboratories.
In which technicians are disciplined?
Oh, and one for Winty: connectome.
I would like to have some disciples. Could come in handy in the lab.
Neuroscientist
Ha! The old bastion is intact!
I loved this bit Jenny:
That drives me crazy!!
Hmmm…I have an undergraduate degree in Animal Physiology, a PhD in Molecular Genetics, and worked as a Neuroscientist in a Pharmacology Department.
When I was the US Embassy in London a few years ago, renewing my visa, the immigration officer tried to call me out on it…”how can you work in a pharmacology department if you don’t have a degree in pharmacology?” So, I blitzed him with technical/discipline terms until he gave in.
fwiw, now I work in the deliciously cumbersome “Biomedical Informatics Unit of the Clinical & Translational Science Institute of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center”. WTF?
Well, the burgeoning field of omics has its own journal already.
I think it should be omiology rather than omiomics. Or possibly omicology.
I can’t take credit for “omiomics” (it was SAB forumite hbogerd), or the British spelling “omeomics” (Richard G.) in that forum topic.
Frank – how about “omiography” (as in “historiography”)?
Ian – I suspect you just abbreviate it to BIUCTSIUTHSC for convenience, no?
Jenny> I don’t know any virologist who would submit a paper to the Journal of Clinical Microbiology._
well… ehh… maybe not. hm, that is actually interesting. (had a somewhat non-good comment that maybe J Clin Micr is mostly used for MDs and not too many virologists that I know of are MD/PhDs…] Then again, I never ever thought about that journal when I did my grad work in microbiology with bacteria and phages in animals…
It was my parents, though, who caused me to question the nomenclature of the various subdisciplines of biology: they wanted to know, simply enough, what I was, so they could tell their neighbors and friends what their daughter was shaping up to be.My mom was upset when, after six years in chemistry, I said (by way of explanation) that I could also be a biologist. She thought it meant that I was going to just throw away all the years I spent doing whatever I did, unaware that (bio)chemistry and (molecular) biology are pretty interchangeable.Parents are the same everywhere, eh?! Mine were most confused when, after an undergraduate degree in genetics, I started my PhD and began calling myself a molecular biologist. I did try to explain the “different approaches to the same problem” thing, but they never quite got it. I said that it would be perfectly find to keep telling their friends that I was a geneticist. IME, non-scientists don’t care/won’t know the difference, and scientists would rather hear what problem you’re working on. Discussions of techniques can come later…
I never know how to describe my current job. My actual title is essentially meaningless. “Grant writer” only describes about 10% of my job. I’ve recently settled on “grant wrangler”, which gets me up to about 80%.
How about Grant Whisperer?
I think “wrangler” better captures the exertion required to get them into the right places at the right times, and in the best possible condition.
snort
Cath: haha 🙂 I see the imagine of a horse that does not like to be ridden…. but will eventually conform.
exACTly.
And sometimes I have to come over all “Tom Cruise in Far and Away”.
I’ve recently settled on “grant wrangler”, which gets me up to about 80%.
I imagine the other 20% is “pain in the ass” (not you, but your job).
I know of what I speak – I think that some of the masters we serve are the same, Cath and I.
Actually, the other 20% is more fun… manuscript edits, press releases, website content etc. I’m not so keen on all the IP stuff though. Most of the pain-in-the-ass stuff is encompassed within the 80% of my time that involves wrangling grants. More on my other blog…
p.s. your final sentence is probably right, to the extent that you will most likely be able to figure out exactly which grant competitions we were applying to from the dates of my posts at the above link.
The power of names and naming things. Do not underestimate it.
That which we call a microbiologist, by any other name would smell as…
Wonderful post Jenny – now I don’t have to bother to write the one that has been kicking around in my head, since you have just said it ever so much more eloquently than I ever could!
But for the record – my first choice for my own title was Genetic Engineer. I just loved the pompousness of it.
A postdoc I once worked with called himself a “plasmid jockey”. I now prefer the Flanders and Swann title, “chief assistant to the assistant chief”, although I seldom use it.
I think I’m less of a Genetic Engineer than a Genetic Conductor. Or maybe, Genetic Pullman Porter.
Genetic Signal Switcher?
Ooo.
My husband calls me a gel jockey.
That conjures up a rather disturbing image. Or is it just me?
It was just you. But now it’s me too.
Thanks for that, Jenny.