In today’s world of web-based access to the published literature, we may have lost something in terms of reading science for pleasure.  Moreover, I suspect that many investigators now confine reading to their areas of research expertise, sifting through the literature of the month to target what is happening in their fields. Part of this is the rapid pace of research, and the fear that we aren’t up to date. Literature exhaustion can set in. I suggest that these habits also decrease the enjoyment of science, and can lead to missed opportunities for adapting findings in one field to another.  And, we risk becoming less well-rounded.

Due to my fulfilling some unspecified criteria, I have been mailed free print versions of the journal Cell each month for the last eight years. At first, I had to force myself to read it. Now, it is the Scientific American of my youth.

In a recent edition, I read about how a pregnant mother tolerates immunological conflict with her fetus (it comes from cells left over from her own in utero experience with her mother); the development of an antibody-based treatment for dengue fever, which acts at an immunologically silent epitope of the virus; a pharmacological rationale for treating Huntington’s disease based on genetic variants that hasten or retard development of the phenotype; the genetic evolution of barley; the role of S and G1 phases of the cell cycle for exiting pluripotency; and the real purpose of the mitochondrial respiratory chain (it’s not to make ATP, but to promote synthesis of aspartate).

These are not topics in my field of study. I don’t think I learned anything that will help me understand my current set of puzzles. And, God forbid, I spent time reading science that will not help me get another grant (as far as I know). But I did learn, and I overcame literature exhaustion.

I highly recommend that all investigators try this, whether they be clinical, translational, or basic scientists. I suggest you try a general journal, and one whose vocabulary you mostly understand. And, that it be a little outside your comfort zone. We keep several such journals on the credenza outside the Office of Research. Feel free to come by and take last month’s edition.

Sincerely,

Stephen Liggett, MD
Vice Dean for Research
Professor of Medicine, Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology
USF Health Morsani College of Medicine