On Being 80

by Elio

Long ago, I thought that reaching 72 years of age would be a reasonable accomplishment, as this would bring me into the new millennium. Done, some time ago. I now have no mileposts in mind, just a still horizon. If anything, it’s this blog that counts. So, let me tell you why this has been and continues to be such an exhilarating, if demanding, experience. I will quote from the very last part of my book, In the Company of Mushrooms. I still like the sound of it and hope that it will help explain my interest in mushrooms, as well as microbes. Before doing that, I want to thank my collaborator, Merry, without whom the task would be far more arduous.

I am a microbiologist by profession, now near the completion of my career. When I collect and study mushrooms, however, I do not act as a professional biologist. Most of what I love about mushrooms and how they fit in people’s lives is far remote from my research and teaching. My life in science has been spent at the laboratory bench: I studied how bacteria grow and make their DNA. I am of the generation that witnessed the beginning of molecular biology and its offspring, genetic engineering. It was only after my career was established that I stepped into the world of forests, pastures, and mushrooms.

Still Life with Mushrooms, Insects and Amphibians. Otto Marseus Van Schrieck,
Dutch (1662). Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Braunschweig, Germany

The distance between these two interests—microbiology and mushrooms—may not appear to be very fundamental to a non-scientist, but it is in fact quite considerable.

It is true that biology is biology, in the sense that the basic question is always the same—What is life?—but at the level at which we participate in the profession of biology there are marked differences in attitude between those who study living things in the field and those who work in laboratories.

This gap is of recent origin—it was unknown until the nineteenth century—and, happily, it gives signs of closing. On the one hand, biologists who study the evolution of living things and their place in the environment are coming into the laboratory to take advantage of modern molecular tools. On the other hand, those who study the functions of living cells have found great opportunities in probing the wondrous diversity of the natural world. The rift between the field worker and the lab worker, in the questions they ask and the attitudes they convey, is narrowing, and we can welcome the fact that biology is reemerging as a unified science. It is worth noting that the “history” in “natural history” is derived from the Greek word for “learning by inquiry,” which today we would name “science.”

For most of my professional life, however, the distinction between “field biology” and “laboratory biology” was quite substantial. My colleagues seemed content to study one or two kinds of bacteria under laboratory conditions and only rarely seemed concerned with the “real world.” The view has been put forth that different personalities are attracted to the two approaches to biology. To overstate the point, the “naturalists” are seen as more caring, more accepting of their role as stewards of living things, whereas the “experimentalists” are thought to be more analytical, interested only in how things work.

That’s the theory, at least. I have always had a hard time with this notion because it seemed, at best, to describe people at the extremes. I feel that I straddled these two worlds. Strange as it may sound, I have developed, if not a love, at least a personal closeness to the bacteria I study. The strains I have worked with are, by and large, harmless to people. To me, they are living things, not just bags of enzymes and DNA. They are, in other words, as alive to me as mushrooms are—and as trees and animals are. So, is the jump from the lab bench to the woodland glade as big as all that? In both places one can find, or make, the opportunity to study nature, to experience life, and it is my hope that this book (and blog) will lead you at least part of the way toward that end.

Comments

[Phil Hanawalt]

Just a note of congratulations on your lively blog, which I have just seen for the first time, and of course on the occasion of your first 80 years! Our paths haven't crossed frequently over our respective careers but I have always enjoyed the times when they have, our senses of humor are synergystic. Our first contact, albiet indirect, dates back to the early years in the Ole Maaloe lab in Copenhagen. You left shortly before I arrived in 1957, but we did share coauthorship on a paper in JMB in 1961. Cheers and I hope to stay in touch. I like the tone and content of your blog. Phil

[Robert Murray]

As a well-established octogenarian and a long-time bacteriologist who has, like you, studied our good friends the bacteria as closely as modesty allows I admire your contention that microbes need to be understood for all their properties and capabilities.
As an attitude to our human lifetime I offer a remark by Carl Robinow when he was our ages and a speaker referred to an "old patient of 70 yrs age" he was heard to murmur " Oh to be 70 again". And anent our bacterial friends my father, EGD Murray,would tell students "It is not the meek that shall inherit the earth but the bacteria"; so they are in there for the long haul and we had better appreciate their nature.

[Cesar Sanchez]

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Elio!

After reading a few sketches from your personal life in your article "Integrative microbiology - the third Golden Age" [J. Biosci. (2003) 28:149-54](*), I was wondering if you have written -- or are planning to write -- some kind of autobiographic book. Your personal view, in length, of over 50 years in the field of microbiology will be very well received.

If spiced with a few anecdotes (grinding up a cow heart, figuring out how to use a freezing microtome, or using "throat swabs for the anatomically opposite end they were intended for") will be a best seller!

(*) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12711806

[Paul Orwin]

Let me second the comments of others here (some regulars, I see!). Happy Birthday Elio!
This blog has been a wonderful tool for me to learn and many fascinating things about microbiology! Not just cool new facts (although there have been many), not just imponderables and fun-to-ponder Talmudic questions, but also some great opportunities to hear the excited virtual voices of people who have been studying this for longer than I've been alive, who've forgotten more than I've learned. It is great to have these conversations on these wonderful topics, and to learn from so many people with some many terrific lifetimes of experience. If I can communicate 1/100 of the enthusiasm that you have for this work, I will count myself a success. The sense of the excitement of discovery, and the mysteries of the natural world, are feelings that all scientists feel, and struggle to communicate to our students. I like to hope that maybe by pointing my students to this site, and by talking about some of these great topics, I communicate a bit of that excitement to them, in the same way you've shown it to me. Thanks for all of your hard work, mazel tov, and many happy returns!

[Mark O. Martin]

Congratulations, Elio, on your 80th birthday. I can only hope that I have your vision and perspective at 80. Adding years may take away from a set of crisp dance moves and leading roles in Hollyweird, but even at my lesser age, I have learned the years grant perspective and patience. Speaking, I am certain, for the vast majority of your readers, we appreciate your humor, broad interests, and entertaining and informative writing style. Your blog is an essential stop for my daily data-roaming, as soon as I turn on my computer.

Just as there are endless stars in our night sky, there are endless microbes within us, on us, and all around us. It used to be said, of the late Mr. Sinatra, "It's Frank's world; we just live in it."

It is even more true of this Planet of Microbes (and I hope to live long enough to see proof that it is a Universe of Microbes). Thank you for sharing your love of microbiology with all of us.

On Saturday, all of the microbial world will celebrate your day!

Elio, you appear to be channeling the spirit of either Gregor Mendel or Charles Darwin!

I think that those of us who work at medical school campuses suffer a bit from narrow vision (i.e. "NIH Roadmap"- thinking), and we may be especially blind to how much is going on out there in "real" biology departments around the world. The grants may be fewer and farther between (although I am not sure this is still true), but these guys get to WORK OUTDOORS!

Last summer I took part in the Molecular Evolution workshop at Wood's Hole, and the folks that I met in that class were an astonishing example of the union of field biology with molecular analysis. While much of their data came in the form of DNA sequences, allele frequencies and phylogenetic trees, the samples themselves were harvested from far and wide. While the era of molecular biology pushed a lot of us into the lab, it may have pushed evolutionary biologists to cast a wider net. I was jealous of many of the scientists I met in that course, who use the same analytical tools I might use, but whose work requires them to spend weeks, months or years in places as remote as the forests of Madagascar, alpine lakes in South America, or the Australian outback. And there is another sea change taking place in evolutionary studies - it is now not only possible to collect and analyze DNA/protein sequences, but it is also increasingly common to reconstruct ancient proteins or evolutionary intermediates and reconnect evolutionary predictions with biology in the lab! While the era of high-throughput genome sequencing is usually heralded as a boon for biomedical research, it's greatest impact may be on environmental, evolutionary and ecological studies.

[stan zahler]

Congratulations on reaching 80, Elio!
Your comments in the blog, and your obvious joy in writing it, are heartwarming. Keep up the good work.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
---stan zahler

[Larry Ayers]

Once again you wax eloquent, Elio!

Today I spent six hours tramping around some land owned by a local cement company. I was accompanied by a contractor who rents the ground floor of my building. We walked many miles but didn't see a single morel. It was fun, though, and we saw the foundations of houses which used to accommodate Eastern-European cement-plant workers.

[daedalus2u]

I first came to your site because I am working with bacteria too, autotrophic ammonia oxidizing bacteria, and how they are commensal and provide an important source of NO/NOx which is regulated by sweating.

My training is in chemical engineering, and I consider the bacteria I am working with not as bags of enzymes, but as little chemical plants, making NO/NOx under the control of a very elaborate control system.

I have been thinking about mushrooms too, also as chemical plants, to convert inedible biomass into edible biomass. Leaf cutter ants have a commensal relationship with the fungi they feed, nurture and grow from the leaves they harvest.

Composting is a way to dispose of most household garbage without land filling it. But composting simply oxidizes the biomass to CO2. I was thinking this morning that household garbage would support mushroom growth quite effectively.

In Africa soils tend to be poor due to their extreme age and the leaching of nutrients from surface layers. High temperatures foster the oxidation of organic carbon in soils and without organic carbon the sorption capacity for cations is very low. Annuals grown for food must generate new roots de novo each season, limiting their depth and extent, and also imposing a cost to the plant in terms of carbon fixation.

Growing nitrogen fixing woody plants and using clippings as mulch has been suggested as a way of supplying nitrogen and also phosphorous and potassium drawn by the woody plant from deep subsoil.

I think using that biomass for growing edible mushroom would be better than using it as mulch. Woody biomass is much easier to store and the energy value of the biomass isn’t completely lost. Of course one needs to be an expert in mushrooms to choose the right ones to grow.