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Editor's NoteWhat, exactly, is biology research? It's a mixed bag. These days, many scientists studying biology do so by performing experiments with lab organisms like rats, fruit flies, or bacteria. Some researchers are also trained as doctors, whose understanding of the enormously complicated human body points them regularly to the most pressing unanswered questions on health. Read about how surgeon and physician-scientist Hobart Harris is trying to solve the molecular mysteries behind a deadly body-wide infection called sepsis. Other biology researchers are neither doctors nor even biologists. They are mathematicians, and they use the awesome, unrelenting power of computers to sift data. Thanks to decades of hard work, biology now has at its doorstep a flood of information. The results are just waiting to be analyzed and converted into life-saving medical treatments. Read about Terry Gaasterland, an expert on artificial intelligence, who is getting computers to learn how to read the language hidden in our DNA. Both funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of
the National Institutes of Health, Harris and Gaasterland are only two
of the many faces of biology today. New faces are needed— will one
of them be yours?
Alison Davis
Office of Communications and Public Liaison, NIGMS
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