Future of Genomics Research: Are Research Leaders (PI)s Jobless ?
Being a Principal Investigator (PI) and leading a scientific research team is an art. A true art of science. One needs to have a strong scientific background that is only obtained through years of extensive training and a clear mind. On top, one should have extraordinary people skills to lead the collaboration of various teams.
Untill 2005 the research filed in life sciences was very colorful. There was heart research, cancer research, diabetes research, plant research and so on. There used to be various research avenues, research tools such as clonning, PCR, real-time PCR, and immunohistochemistry.
The research leaders, Principle Investigators (PIs)were knowledgeable and creative in their fields and were producing valuable knowledge.
However, this is changing today. Today, the color of research is black and white and it is in the form of digital code -101010101-.
Computers are crunching indefinitely huge data packages in fractions of seconds and give you all the colors of a research study with highest resolution.
There are no various research avenues anymore. Only, two options for research exist; i)genome sequencing and ii)gene expression analysis. Regardless of whatever disease, whatever species you want to study, you need to sequence the genome and do a gene expression analysis. Sometimes, both together in a quantitative RNA sequencing approach.
All a PI needs to do today is just to write down the name of a disease, cell type, secure enough funding for gene sequencing, and feed the data into computers.
There are no separate research fields, such as heart research, cancer research, diabetes research anymore. Computer analysis tells us that the chronic diseases are sharing the same genes. The boundaries are blurry.
The science is advancing, more correctly, running in the right direction. However, I am afraid that pharma giants do not need research leaders, PIs in the classical sense anymore.
Feed the data into computers and it will tell you whether it is a promising cure and worth to invest in. No people skills are required, all you have to do is to invest initially into genome sequencing.
