One of my activities is representing NIGMS on the NIH Financial Conflict of Interest Panel. This group has put substantial time and effort into updating the financial conflict of interest regulations that apply to NIH grant applicants. The proposed changes to the regulations are reflected in a recently released notice of proposed rulemaking (link no longer available) that is now open for comment. You may submit comments electronically or by mail as long as they are received by July 20, 2010. Although responsibility for reporting and managing financial conflicts of interest would remain with the grantee institution, several of the proposed changes would affect individual investigators. For example, investigator disclosure requirements would be expanded to include all significant financial interests related to the investigator's institutional responsibilities. In addition, the dollar threshold for disclosure of significant financial interests would be $5,000 (it's currently $10,000), and this amount would apply to both payments and equity interests. Equity interest of any amount in non-publicly traded entities is considered a significant financial interest and would have to be disclosed. Investigators would also be required to complete financial conflict of interest training before engaging in NIH-funded research and every 2 years thereafter. I encourage you to look over the proposed rulemaking document as well as to learn how your institution will be implementing the new financial conflict of interest policy. UPDATE: The comment period on the proposed changes to financial conflict of interest regulations has been extended to August 19. For more details, see the NIH Guide.

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of our conversion of the NIGMS Feedback Loop from a thrice-yearly electronic newsletter into a blog. The year has passed quickly, but I think successfully. Our inaugural post, Answering Your Recovery Act Questions, was the first of 16 entries related to the Recovery Act, and many of these led to extensive comments and replies. Throughout this extremely fast-paced period, the blog format served us all well: We provided you information in a timely fashion, and you helped us better understand what questions and concerns we needed to address. The Feedback Loop has also covered many other topics. These are grouped into over 20 categories for easy browsing or searching. As of today, the site includes 86 posts by 28 NIGMS staff members. During the last year, many people from the scientific community have told me how much they appreciate receiving information from us about NIGMS and NIH. The Feedback Loop is our major outlet for doing this, and we want make it as useful as possible to you and to us. Please don't hesitate to comment on posts, e-mail me suggestions or other ideas or submit new post topics to the blog's editor.

Since I first wrote about the death of former NIGMS director Dr. Ruth Kirschstein, plans have progressed for a daylong commemorative event on Monday, May 17, at NIH. The program will include several remembrances as well as scientific presentations and posters by recipients of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award. I will update you when the final program is available.

NIH Director Francis Collins announced today that the first 13 human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines to be approved under the new NIH Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research have been placed on the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry, and NIH grantees may now use them. These lines were not previously eligible for NIH funding under the 2001 guidelines. Investigators whose grants were awarded with restrictions on using the funds for hESC research should check the registry to determine if any of the lines are suitable for their projects. Please see today's NIH Guide notice for more details, including procedures on how to request that the award restrictions be lifted. An additional 96 lines have been submitted for inclusion in the registry. We expect that more will become eligible for use in the coming months.

We launched the Feedback Loop blog about six months ago. What do you think so far? You can e-mail me or share comments about our post topics, frequency, e-mail alerts, general usefulness, etc. I’d also like your thoughts on how we can create more opportunities for you to join the conversation by posting comments. This blog was our first foray into the new world of social media. Since then, we’ve launched a Twitter feed and Facebook page to inform the public about NIGMS-funded research advances and our science education materials. NIH is also on Twitter and Facebook with health-related material for the public as well as a separate Twitter feed for funding opportunities. If you have suggestions for additional ways we could use social or other media tools to keep you informed, please share them with me or on the Feedback Loop.

We once again received wonderful Nobel news today. We were delighted to learn that three long-time NIGMS grantees--Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath--will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome."

Remarkably, at the same 1987 "Evolution of Catalytic Function" Cold Spring Harbor meeting where I first met Carol Greider, I heard Ada Yonath describe her initial attempts to crystallize and determine the structure of the ribosome. Tom Steitz also spoke about his exciting structure determination of DNA polymerase I, and Peter Moore talked about his work on the ribosome using specific deuterium labeling and neutron scattering methods developed in part with Venki Ramakrishnan. The meeting was filled with the promise that we would one day visualize and begin to understand this elaborate RNA-protein machine in atomic detail. More than a decade later, that promise was realized, as recognized by today's announcement.

The Nobel committee has the daunting challenge of limiting itself to up to three laureates for each prize. Several other long-time NIGMS grantees who also contributed greatly to our understanding of the structure and function of the ribosome include Peter Moore, Harry Noller and Joachim Frank.

We were all very sad to learn of the death of Ruth Kirschstein, M.D., last evening. She will be deeply missed here at NIGMS, NIH, and beyond. Dr. Kirschstein was an iconic figure at NIH and in the scientific community. She was the long-time director of NIGMS, serving from 1974 to 1993, and was the first female director of an NIH institute. She also served as acting director of NIH, deputy director of NIH, and in other key positions. Dr. Kirschstein truly represented the best of NIH—public service, wisdom, and deep knowledge and analysis of important problems. She was so profoundly modest that Congress had to surprise her when they acknowledged her contributions and commitment to research training with the naming of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards. I am sure much more will be said and written about her in the future, and we will share this with you in the comments section. I encourage you to post your own thoughts about her as well.

We were delighted to learn this morning that long-time NIGMS grantees Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their "discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." I remember very well the presentation by then-graduate student Carol Greider at the 1987 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology about her purification and initial characterization of telomerase and component RNA. Her passion and enthusiasm for science stood out, even in that high-powered crowd. I also enjoyed working with her when we were colleagues at Johns Hopkins before I came to NIGMS. The work of Blackburn, Greider and Szostak represents an archetype of curiosity-driven basic research. The fact that DNA synthesis requires a template creates a clear challenge to copying the ends of DNA. The reality of this challenge was clear from Szostak’s studies with linear DNA molecules in yeast. Using a model organism (Tetrahymena) selected for its unusually high abundance of DNA ends, Blackburn’s lab identified telomere sequences and showed, with Szostak, that these sequences did, in fact, stabilize linear DNA molecules in yeast. Blackburn and Greider then set out to detect and purify the enzyme that adds telomeres to DNA. After their success, they and many other researchers have explored the implications of these observations as they relate to cancer, cellular aging and stem cells. In the years to come, we can expect to see additional implications and broad exploitation of these observations.

Yesterday, President Obama announced the 2009 recipients of the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The nine winners of the National Medal of Science include NIH Director Francis Collins and long-time NIGMS grantee JoAnne Stubbe, a biochemist at MIT. I am delighted that the President recognized these outstanding scientists and innovators for their contributions.

Five years ago this summer, MIDAS, the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study, was born. When we began, we knew the effort to develop computational models of disease spread would play a role in preparing for new outbreaks—we just didn’t think it’d be so immediate. First with H5N1 fears and now with the H1N1 pandemic, our researchers have provided computational models to help decisionmakers from all levels of the government plan ways to control flu.

While modeling is just one of many tools used in making policy recommendations, it can help explore different scenarios and outcomes. In the case of flu, MIDAS scientists have used their models to help answer questions like:

• Can you contain a pandemic locally?
• What’s the best way to slow the spread of flu while we develop a vaccine?
• What’s the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions?
• Should we distribute antivirals before an outbreak?

As we head into the next five years, we are adding two new centers and three research groups that are pretty exciting. They bring expertise in such areas as MRSA modeling, high-performance computing, statistics, social behavior and visualization tools for non-experts. We're also going to put a lot more effort into understanding the ecology and evolution of disease, the impact of co-infections, and antibiotic and antiviral resistance.

The two new centers have an additional charge in education and outreach, particularly with public health officials from around the world. I am especially looking forward to this, since there's such a great need for people with backgrounds in infectious disease epidemiology to also be able to do analytical and computational work.

The thoughtful, careful studies we do through MIDAS require a diverse group of people to communicate with each other every day. One thing I love about the way MIDAS has matured over the years is that we've built a level of trust and collaboration. Our researchers freely share data, ideas, and analytical and computational tools.

As we’ve learned, health policy questions emerge and develop almost instantly as new issues arise. Our challenge will continue to be modeling in this real-time context.