Salk Institute for Biological Studies | |
---|---|
General information | |
Type | Institutional |
Town or city | San Diego, California, U.S. |
Current tenants | Salk Institute |
Named for | Jonas Salk |
Completed | 1965 |
Technical details | |
Structural system | Vierendeel trusses |
Material | Poured concrete |
Floor count | 4 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Louis I. Kahn |
Structural engineer | August Komendant |
Awards and prizes | American Institute of Architects Twenty-five Year Award |
Website | |
salk |
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California. [1] The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Construction of the research facilities began in spring of 1962. The Salk Institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. [2]
As of October 2020, the Salk Institute employs 850 researchers in 60 research groups and focuses its research in three areas: molecular biology and genetics; neurosciences; and plant biology. Research topics include aging, cancer, diabetes, birth defects, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, AIDS, and the neurobiology of American Sign Language. [3] March of Dimes provided the initial funding and continues to support the institute. Research is funded by a variety of public sources, such as the US National Institutes of Health and the government of California; and private organizations such as Paris-based Ipsen, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Waitt Family Foundation. [4] In addition, the internally administered Innovation Grants Program encourages cutting-edge high-risk research. [5] In 2017 the Salk Institute Trustees elected former president of Booz Allen Hamilton, Daniel C. Lewis, as Board Chairman. [6]
The institute also served as the basis for Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's 1979 book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. [7]
Salk and architect Louis I. Kahn approached the city of San Diego in March 1960 about a gift of land on the Torrey Pines Mesa and were granted their request after a referendum in June 1960. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known today as the March of Dimes, provided the initial funding. [8] Construction began in 1962 and a handful of researchers moved into the first laboratory in 1963. Additional buildings housing more laboratories as well as the organizational administrative offices were constructed in the 1990s, designed by Anshen & Allen.
As a memorial to Jonas Salk, a golden engraving lies on the floor at the entrance to the institute: "Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."
Francis Crick held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post at the Salk Institute until his death in 2004.
From April 22 to 27, 2010, the Salk Institute hosted glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly to celebrate 50 years of its inception. [9] The event was underwritten by Irwin Jacobs, past chairman of the board of trustees.
Jonas Salk founded the institute in 1963 in the San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla. Salk believed that the institution would help new and upcoming scientists along in their careers, as he said himself, "I thought how nice it would be if a place like this existed and I was invited to work there." Many supporters, in particular the National Foundation, "helped him build his dream of a research complex for the investigation of biological phenomena 'from cell to society'." [10]
In 1966, Salk described his "ambitious plan for the creation of a kind of Socratic academy where the supposedly alienated two cultures of science and humanism will have a favorable atmosphere for cross-fertilization." [11] Author and journalist Howard Taubman explained:
Although he is distinctly future-oriented, Dr. Salk has not lost sight of the institute's immediate aim, which is the development and use of the new biology, called molecular and cellular biology, described as part physics, part chemistry and part biology. The broad-gauged purpose of this science is to understand man's life processes.
There is talk here of the possibility, once the secret of how the cell is triggered to manufacture antibodies is discovered, that a single vaccine may be developed to protect a child against many common infectious diseases. There is speculation about the power to isolate and perhaps eliminate genetic errors that lead to birth defects.
Dr. Salk, a creative man himself, hopes that the institute will do its share in probing the wisdom of nature and thus help enlarge the wisdom of man. For the ultimate purpose of science, humanism and the arts, in his judgment, is the freeing of each individual to cultivate his full creativity, in whichever direction it leads. ... As if to prepare for Socratic encounters such as these, the institute's architect, Louis Kahn, has installed blackboards in place of concrete facings on the walls along the walks. [12]
The New York Times , in a 1980 article celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Salk vaccine, described the current workings at the facility:
At the institute, a magnificent complex of laboratories and study units set on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, Dr. Salk holds the titles of founding director and resident fellow. His own laboratory group is concerned with the immunologic aspects of cancer and the mechanisms of autoimmune disease, such as multiple sclerosis, in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues. [13]
In an interview about his future hopes at the institute, he said, "In the end, what may have more significance is my creation of the institute and what will come out of it, because of its example as a place for excellence, a creative environment for creative minds."
Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, was a leading professor at the institute until his death in 2004.
The institute also served as the basis for Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's 1979 book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. [14]
The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California (1959–1965) was to be a campus composed of three clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was built. The two laboratory blocks frame a long view of the Pacific Ocean, accentuated by a thin linear fountain that seems to reach for the horizon.
The campus was designed by Louis Kahn. [15] Salk had sought a beautiful campus in order to draw the best researchers in the world. The original buildings of the Salk Institute were designated a historical landmark in 1991. The entire 27-acre (11 ha) site was deemed eligible by the California Historical Resources Commission in 2006 for listing in the US National Register of Historic Places. It is "arguably the defining work" of Kahn. [16]
Jack MacAllister, FAIA, of the Kahn office, was the supervising architect and a design influence on the building that consists of two symmetric wings with a water stream flowing towards the ocean in the middle travertine-paved central plaza that separates the two. [17] [18] [19] In the beginning the buildings were made up of different types of concrete mixes of different color. In the basement of the complex, there are different colored water walls because Kahn was experimenting with the mixtures. The buildings themselves have been designed to promote collaboration, and thus there are no walls separating laboratories on any of the floors. The lighting fixtures on the roof slide along rails thus reflecting the collaborative and open philosophy of the Salk Institute's science.
After two years of design work, and after the design had been approved and meetings with building contractors had begun, Kahn and the Salk Institute abruptly decided to reduce the number of laboratory buildings from four narrow ones to two wider ones and to increase the number of floors per building from two to three. August Komendant re-engineered the structure and produced a new set of drawings with a speed that professor Leslie described as "legendary". [20] : 143–149, 200 Komendant also trained the construction workers in techniques for producing a highly refined concrete finish. [20] : 156, 165
In 1992 the American Institute of Architects (AIA) gave this building its prestigious Twenty-five Year Award, which is given to only one building per year. [21]
Inside the laboratories, the ducts and vents are reinforced by concrete Vierendeel trusses supported by post-tensioned columns. [22] The authorities at the time were very cautious due to the fact that they felt these trusses would not be able to hold in case of an earthquake, but in a tour de force of structural design, Komendant was able to achieve twice the ductility that a steel frame offered. [22]
At first Kahn wanted to put a garden in the middle of the two buildings but, as construction continued, he did not know what shape it should take. When he saw an exhibit of Luis Barragan's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kahn invited Baragan to collaborate on the court that separated the two buildings. Barragan told Kahn that he should not add one leaf, nor plant, not one flower, nor dirt, instead, make it a plaza with a single water feature. The resulting space is considered the most impressive element of the entire design.[ by whom? ]
In the courtyard is a citrus grove containing several rows of semi-dwarf Valencia orange trees. This grove replaces the original grove which contained orange and kumquat trees which were then replaced with lime trees in the 1995 grove refurbishment. This latest replacement was due primarily to a need to remove current trees for structural repairs and waterproofing of central plant ceilings. The trees were mulched and used for ground cover in compliance with project commitments to sustainability. The decision not to replant additional lime trees stems from dissatisfaction with the manner in which the current trees defoliate and turn yellow in the shade. Valencia compensates for shade by producing additional chlorophyll in shaded section, becoming greener.
The Salk Institute replete with empty space is symbolic of an open environment for creation. The contrast between balance and dynamic space manifests a pluralistic invitation for scientific study in structures developed to accommodate their respective functions as parts of a research facility. Although modern in appearance, it is essentially an isolated compound for individual and collaborative study, not unlike monasteries as sanctuaries for religious discovery, and they are thought to have directly influenced Kahn in his design. Ultimately, the Salk Institute's meaning can be interpreted as transcending function and physical place as a reflection of Western civilization's pursuit of truth through science.
In 2014, the Getty Conservation Institute partnered with the Salk Institute to preserve the concrete and teak building which is, due to its coastal location, subject to the punishing rigors of a marine environment. [18]
Most of the laboratories and studies are named after the benefactors, such as the Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology [23] and the Razavi Newman Center for Bioinformatics. [24] A library that houses current periodicals, some books and computers is located on the 3rd level of the west end of the North building. [25] The Conrad T. Prebys auditorium and the Trustees' Room are located in the basement of the east buildings of the institute.
According to A. Perez, the concrete was made with volcanic ash relying on the basis of ancient Roman concrete making techniques, and as a result gives off a warm, pinkish glow. This "pozzolanic" concrete was then only vibrated as needed structurally, leaving a lightly textured wall face. The basement also houses the transgenic core. Each laboratory block has five study towers, with each tower containing four offices, except for those near the entrance to the court, which only contain two. A diagonal wall allows each of the thirty-six scientists using the studies to have a view of the Pacific, and every study is fitted with a combination of operable sliding and fixed glass panels in teak wood frames. Originally the design also included living quarters and a conference building, but they were never built.
In keeping with his design and the philosophy of "served and servant spaces," [a] [26] and as the vast requirement for mechanical spaces were extensive, Kahn decided to create a separate service floor for them above each of the laboratories to make it easier to reconfigure individual laboratories in the future without disrupting neighboring spaces. He also designed each laboratory floor to be entirely free of internal support columns, making laboratory configuration easier. Komendant engineered the Vierendeel trusses that make this arrangement possible. These pre-stressed concrete trusses are about 62 feet (19 m) long, spanning the full width of each floor and extending from the bottom of each service floor to the top. They are supported by steel cables embedded in the concrete in a curve similar to that of cables supporting a suspension bridge. Their rectangular openings, which are 6 feet (1.8 m) high in the center and 5 feet (1.5 m) at the ends, allow maintenance workers to move easily through the thicket of pipes and ducts on the service floors. The trusses impose strictly vertical loads on their support columns, to which they are attached not rigidly but with a system of slip plates and tension cables to permit small movements during moderate earthquakes. [20] : 97
The meeting and conference areas and the living quarters were formally designated by Kahn as the Meeting Place and Living Place, respectively. He continued to make drawings of these spaces even after their cancellation following a shortage in construction funding. Kahn's stressed importance of the Meeting Place and Living Place to the entirety of the campus plan was in accordance to the Urban Reidentification Grid concepts proposed by British architects Peter and Alison Smithson nearly a decade before, in which interconnectivity between communal activities and their respective spaces took priority. Aesthetically, the unbuilt areas combined cuboidal and cylindrical forms, distinguishing them from the laboratory cluster. The U-shaped road that was part of the original plan was built and exists to this day, but its ends that would have connected the Meeting Place and Living Place to the central laboratories are left bare or occupied by a parking lot. [27]
The institute is organized into several research units, each of which is further composed of several scientific groups, each led by a member of the faculty. Some of these units are:
Rusty Gage was named to a five-year term to lead the Institute on January 1, 2019. [28] In February 2023 he returned to full-time laboratory work and was succeeded as president by Gerald Joyce. [29] The Austrian molecular biologist Jan Karlseder is the chair of the academic council. [30] There are 53 faculty members. Five of these are members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and more than a quarter are elected members of the US National Academy of Sciences. [31]
In terms of research output measured by number of publications and citations, the institute is recognized as one of the world's leading institutions in several areas of biology, especially in neurosciences and plant biology. [32] [33] [34]
In December 2009, the Time magazine ranked Joseph R. Ecker's mapping of the human epigenome as the second biggest scientific achievement of 2009. [35]
In May 2008, the California state government announced that it would provide $US270 million for funding California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). The Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, a joint effort between Salk Institute, UC San Diego, Burnham Institute and TSRI, received US$43 million from this funding. [36] [37]
In addition, the institute employs postdoctoral scholars and staff scientists who receive training for academic leadership.
Salk Institute currently runs the Harnessing Plants Initiative (HPI), which aims to improve the capability of agricultural crops to sequester carbon. It comprises two programs:
The Salk Ideal Plants are plants that are genetically modified. The intent is to create plants with increased root mass, root depth and suberin content. [38]
Although the Salk Institute is not a degree-granting institution, it runs a graduate program together with the neighboring UC San Diego, and all Salk Institute professors receive adjunct appointments in the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego. In addition, several faculty members are affiliated with other programs such as the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Cellular and Molecular Medicine. [39] The students pursue either a PhD or an MD/PhD degree.
As of 2024, the institute has one Nobel laureate on its faculty: Elizabeth Blackburn. Four of Salk's 11 Nobel laureates were deceased by 2016: Francis Crick, Robert W. Holley, Renato Dulbecco, and Sydney Brenner. Another five scientists trained at Salk have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. [41]
Francis Harry Compton Crick was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule.
Nucleic acids are large biomolecules that are crucial in all cells and viruses. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomer components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). If the sugar is ribose, the polymer is RNA; if the sugar is deoxyribose, a variant of ribose, the polymer is DNA.
Donald Arthur Glaser was an American physicist, neurobiologist, and the winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used in subatomic particle physics.
Sydney Brenner was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He established the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for the investigation of developmental biology, and founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, California, United States.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution that was independent for most of its history, but became officially affiliated with the University of Chicago on July 1, 2013. It also collaborates with numerous other institutions.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is located in Laurel Hollow on Long Island, New York.
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere, with Carol W. Greider. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak, becoming the first Australian woman Nobel laureate.
Terrence Joseph Sejnowski is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretical and computational biology. He has performed pioneering research in neural networks and computational neuroscience.
Roger Charles Louis Guillemin was a French-American neuroscientist. He received the National Medal of Science in 1976, and the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1977 for his work on neurohormones, sharing the prize that year with Andrew Schally and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical research laboratory at the forefront of scientific discovery, dedicated to improving the understanding of key biological processes at atomic, molecular and cellular levels using multidisciplinary methods, with a focus on using this knowledge to address key issues in human health.
The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine is the graduate medical school of the University of California, San Diego, a public land-grant research university in La Jolla, California. It was the third medical school in the University of California system, after those established at UCSF and UCLA, and is the only medical school in the San Diego metropolitan area. It is closely affiliated with the medical centers that are part of UC San Diego Health.
The Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (LRI) was a biological research facility which conducted research into the basic biology of cancer.
The Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT is a cancer research center affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The institute is one of seven National Cancer Institute-designated basic laboratory cancer centers in the United States.
Jonas Edward Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.
The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical research centre in London, which was established in 2010 and opened in 2016. The institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King's College London (KCL), the Medical Research Council, University College London (UCL) and the Wellcome Trust. The institute has 1,500 staff, including 1,250 scientists, and an annual budget of over £100 million, making it the biggest single biomedical laboratory in Europe.
August Eduard Komendant was an Estonian and American structural engineer and a pioneer in the field of prestressed concrete, which can be used to build stronger and more graceful structures than normal concrete. He was born in Estonia and educated in engineering in Germany. After World War II he immigrated to the United States, where he wrote several books on structural engineering and served as a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
Inder Mohan Verma is an Indian American molecular biologist, the former Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California, San Diego. He is recognized for seminal discoveries in the fields of cancer, immunology, and gene therapy.
Joanne Chory is an American plant biologist and geneticist. Chory is a professor and director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Joseph R. Ecker is an American plant biologist and molecular biologist. He is Professor of Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory and Director of the Genomic Analysis Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He holds the Salk International Council Chair in Genetics.