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Ask Bold Questions

February 26, 2007 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 85, Issue 9

Volunteerism: Helped or hurt your career?

Has volunteering given your career a boost? Or has it had unintentional negative effects? Good or bad, C&EN would like to hear about these experiences for an article examining volunteerism's impact on people's careers. If you'd like to be part of this story, contact Linda Wang at l_wang@acs.org or (202) 872-4579.

Luis Echegoyen, the new director of the Chemistry Division at the National Science Foundation, suggests that a way to reverse the relatively downward funding trend for the division "is to come up with something in chemistry that really catches everybody's attention" (C&EN, Nov. 27, 2006, page 21). Based on my experience as acting director of the division, I strongly agree. In seeking support for chemistry research, it is continually necessary to convey to nonchemists the intellectual questions that move the field forward. So no one will be left out, we frequently come up with laundry lists rather than challenges. I suggest one challenge that is simple to understand, engages the imagination, and is at its heart chemical in nature: What is the molecular nature of the origin of life?

This challenge requires the development of understanding in several areas that are currently at the frontiers of research in the chemical sciences. We know now that living things replicate themselves by transferring information from DNA to RNA to proteins. We also know that RNA can itself act as an enzyme, usurping some of the functions hitherto reserved for proteins alone. This has given rise to the concept of a primitive RNA world, in which self-replication and metabolism were both mediated by RNA. Can we develop laboratory tests for this or other hypotheses? Is it possible to develop chemical systems that undergo Darwinian evolution?

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