Prize Medal 2020 Q&A – Professor Martin Blaser
29 April 2021
The Microbiology Society Prizes recognise excellence and are awarded to those making significant contributions in the field of microbiology, based on nominations received from our membership. They are awarded at our Annual Conference, where the winners also present their lectures. Ahead of the Prize Medal Lecture 2020 taking place today, Prerna Vohra and Omololu Fagunwa, from the Society’s Early Career Microbiologists’ Forum Executive Committee, interviewed prize winner Professor Martin Blaser to find out more about his work and how it feels to win a Microbiology Society prize.
The Prize Medal is awarded to an outstanding microbiologist who is a global leader in their field and whose work has had a far-reaching impact beyond the discipline of microbiology. What does receiving this prestigious award mean to you?
I am very grateful for this wonderful recognition. To me, this prize is a testament to the many people I have worked with in my lab over the years. We worked as a team. The topics changed, the people – students, postdocs, colleagues – came and went, and yet there always was the wonderful spirit in the lab of researchers trying to understand the secrets of nature, and doing so to improve human health. This is what makes being a scientist so much fun: the creativity, team work, shared goals and to together make discoveries that have a most worthwhile purpose. It’s hard to think of many better fields!
When and how did your interest in microbiology begin?
I am a physician by training. In 1977, I began a clinical fellowship in Infectious Diseases, and as part of that fellowship I was required to engage in a research project. As luck had it, on day 10 of my fellowship, I was asked to see a very ill patient who had meningitis and bacteraemia with a weird bacterium, called Campylobacter fetus, an organism that I had never heard of. C. fetus, and its recently discovered cousin, C. jejuni, became the focus of my work for the next 10 years. Studying both campylobacters allowed me to begin to deepen my understanding of cell physiology, immunology, genetics, experimental pathology and epidemiology. Then, when a new ‘Campylobacter’ was found (and ultimately called Helicobacter pylori), I had developed sufficient tools that I could study that one as well. Then, extending from H. pylori, when I became interested in the human microbiome, and it was clear that reductionist methods were not sufficient, I started learning ecology.
How did you choose your research topics and what were your motivations?
Since that first patient more than 40 years ago, my research focus has continually evolved. In each case, I kept following where the problem took me. But sometimes, a person joined the group who brought new ideas, techniques or specimens to the lab, and that moved us in a new direction. And of course, new papers always are appearing, and their discoveries led us in new directions, and to new levels of complexity. In going to conferences and being invited to visit other universities, institutes and companies, I met people who became collaborators, or who suggested ideas for our work, or whose methodologies we could apply to our problems. Being a bacteriologist, I refer to this as ‘academic conjugation’, and just as it is valuable for bacteria, it is most useful for scientists as well.
How have improvements in technology impacted on your research?
Technology advances. When I began as an investigator, computers were hardly used in medical research, as shocking as that may seem today! In the early 2000s, we were trying to understand the microbial composition of the skin by cloning 16S rRNA genes. It took us about a year to get ~1800 clones, and thus begin to define the microbial constituents of the skin. Now, with high throughput sequencing, we can generate 5 million reads in an afternoon, without trying too hard. Today, high throughput sequencing allows us to see the genes that form part of a community of microbes, or that are expressed in the host. Technology allows us to see more, to face the complexity, but challenges our analytical capabilities. There have been great improvements in the approaches, but the most important tool remains the creative mind, asking the right questions. This is the never-ending challenge.
Did you have mentors who guided and supported you through your career?
Yes, I had many wonderful mentors in my career. My first mentor was Wen-Lan Lou Wang, a clinical microbiologist whose approaches to science were rigorous in method. She always guided me to do work completely and not take short-cuts. I learned much from her, and we worked closely together for more than 10 years. I worked with Marc LaForce from whom I learned how to use animal models (mice) to precisely answer important questions in the pathogenesis of infections. When I worked at the Centers for Disease Control, my mentor was Roger Feldman, who was an outstanding epidemiologist. Later in my career, I had sabbaticals (and mini-sabbaticals) with Emil Gotschlich at Rockefeller University and Agnès Labigne at Institut Pasteur, respectively; from them, I learned enough to begin incorporating molecular genetics into my work. But in reality, I have benefitted from so many colleagues over the years. One conclusion is that one is never too old to be mentored, nor too busy to not be a mentor in return.
Have you ever stumbled upon anything by accident during your research career? How important do you think instinct is for a scientist?
At every point in your career, you are at a branch point. Often there are no guideposts and you must follow your gut. You plan your work in a purposeful manner, but the accidents are often where the big discoveries come from. If you laid out a good experiment and did it carefully, and something unexpected came up, you can see it immediately. If not, you think that you made a mistake, when it can actually lead to a discovery. One needs to be careful, but also have the ability to recognise the unexpected. I can remember a dozen times when the results did not add up, which led us to discover a new principle. It is a recurring theme. In 1854, Pasteur said, “Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés” – “where observation is concerned, chance favours only the prepared mind.”
How, if ever, did you deal with failure?
All scientists must get used to failure – which comes in many forms – failed experiments, failed submissions of papers, rejected grant proposals. With resilience, luck, intelligence and hard work, these are only temporary failures, and you begin the next day with a new plan. In our system, failure is a constant. This is what makes persistence so important. It also is important to both develop a thick skin – to not take it too personally – and to have a support system of loved loves, friends, colleagues and mentors who can both commiserate with you, but also to help you think about how to improve. Tenacity is the most important way to overcome failure.
You sit on the board of several organisations. How perceptive do you think the public is to scientists?
The public is mixed; there are many strong advocates of science, and others who are overtly anti-science. This is the hardest group, because their ‘anti-science’ has become a kind of religion, and it is impossible to argue successfully about which religion is better, to deal with dogma. For those in the public who have an open mind about science, it is wonderful to show them the beauty of nature and the power of the scientific method. I often give the example that humans have dreamed about walking on the moon for a very long time, but it is the scientific method that got us there. It was no accident, but a step-by-step approach, each one building on the last. If science could get us to the moon, there is no end to the problems it can solve.
What advice would you give to early career researchers today?
I always give the same advice to any scientist, young or old: follow your nose. Study what you are curious about, the problem that keeps you awake at night. Curiosity and the other side of the coin, passion, are the essential elements in all outstanding scientific careers. Keep going where the problem leads you. Do not get wedded to a single technique, and let the technique guide. Let the scientific question guide, and it will lead you into many new paths (it certainly has for me). Also, science has to be enjoyable; if it is not, you are in the wrong situation or the wrong field. Despite our continual grumbling about lack of money, good parking places and promotion, scientists are a pretty happy lot, and well we should be. It is a great privilege to be paid and respected for just doing the work we love.
How do you think early career researchers can have impact outside academia?
All scientists have the responsibility to convince the public that science is important, indeed that it is necessary. The public supports our work; without that support, it would be a much smaller field. As discussed above, there is a worrying tendency among the public to take science for granted, and a lack of trust in the scientific method and its implications. It is important for all of us to teach the public about the importance of science, and of our continuing need for scientific inquiry. We should dialogue and teach – starting with our extended family, but into the community, schools and the public at large. To some scientists, this is too great a distraction, but I believe that we all should do it. A very effective way to educate the public is to speak about your own work and why you believe it is important. Scientists deal with abstraction all of the time, but the more concrete we can make our explanations, the easier it is for a broad group to grasp them. But it is a continuing challenge: good luck!
The Prize Medal Lecture 2020 takes place today at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference Online 2021 at 17:30-18:15.
Inspired by our outstanding prize winners? Nominations for 2022 Prize Lectures and the 2023 Prize Medal are now open. Visit the Prize Lecture pages for more information.
Image: Martin Blaser.
