A highly research-minded environment on top of the hills: the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

For the last institute visit, we went to the top of the hills surrounding Heidelberg, to visit the newly opened Advanced Training Centre of the European Molecular Biology (EMBL) with its impressive DNA strands as staircases. The building looked very interesting. What would we learn from this visit? In contrast to many of the other visits, we were not provided with a lot of research projects that were currently running in the institute because a major workshop coincided with the time of our visit. Instead of having direct contact with young researcher and their work, we got more insight into how a specialised research institute such as EMBL has created an optimal research environment.

EMBL was established in 1974 according to the CERN model. Financed by 20 member states (of which most are European countries), it is one of eight intergovernmental research organizations in Heideberg. The EMBL is a very special laboratory, due to its continuous turnover. This means that employees can only work here for a maximum of 9 years. Furthermore, the researchers are relatively young (average 37 years) compared to other institutes.

EMBL has five pillars: fundamental research in molecular biology, advanced training in teaching and research, development of instrumentation and technology, transfer of technology to society and provision of facilities services (database). To illustrate the last point, EMBL manages databases for a lot of structures of proteins and DNA/RNA sequences, which have been an enormous gain in molecular biology and pharmaceutical sciences.

To achieve its five pillars, EMBL provides a lot of freedom to its researchers. The research institute invites PhD candidates or Post-Doc candidates from all over the world. During their stay, researchers are allowed to set up and perform their own research projects according to their own methods, provided that it suits in the EMBL focus area. In principle, PhD or Post-Docs at EMBL do not need to spend their time applying for extra funding (what they get from the member states is sufficient). Teaching activities are not required at EMBL, in contrast to many PhD positions at the University Utrecht. However, PhD students are free to choose their own tract to obtain teaching skills.

Joining EMBL is absolutely not easy; only 1 out of 25 applicants will be selected for a position at EMBL. On the other hand, the supervision is very intensive. On average, a supervisor supervises about two PhD students. Not only biologists are at work at the EMBL, but also researchers with a background in physics, biomedical science, chemistry, mathematics and computer science. Researchers often share their knowledge at regularly organized seminars. And what’s more interesting and motivating, during these seminars they get the opportunity to meet Nobel Prize Winners.

After learning this, we were treated to a very lively presentation by a very enthusiastic PhD student who shared his research project with us: “the effect of genome architecture on gene expression”. He had worked in many places around the world before he ended up in EMBL. Since his childhood, he has been fascinated about how the DNA genotype actually causes the phenotype to be expressed. Apart from the coding DNA that can be directly transcribed and processed to messenger RNA, the non-coding DNA is crucial in the regulation of transcription. Many aspects and mechanisms regarding the non-coding DNA are still to be elucidated.

Normally, transcription can be measured in vitro. However, since this researcher wanted to investigate the transcription activity in different tissues at an embryonic stage, he had to use another approach. He inserted genes in transgenic mice through a sophisticated mechanism that can cut and paste genes on specific sites of the DNA genome. Afterwards, the transcriptional activity in different tissues in the mice embryos could be measured. He showed that the transcriptional activity of genes was highly tissue dependent.

At the end, we learnt from a current Post-Doc who did his PhD internship in Utrecht, that Heidelberg offers very good research facilities. Instead of preparing and ordering their own materials (which is mostly done at University Utrecht), researchers can simply go to a common lab/store room to get what they need. This makes research at EMBL much more efficient.

In conclusion, the EMBL provides a great research environment with a lot of opportunities. Researchers can directly focus on their own ideas and perform these without being hindered by for example grants or applications compared to research at a university. Researchers have much freedom to obtain extra training and teaching skills. Because of the continuous turnover, the organization within the EMBL is very dynamic and will never be the same for more than a couple of years. The admission to application ratio is very low, but all researchers who make it through the selection will be guaranteed to learn a great deal during their stay in one of the best molecular biology laboratories in the world.

Cedric Lau