Ronald M. Atlas is Graduate Dean, Professor of Biology and Public Health, and Co-director of the Center for Health Hazards Preparedness at the University of Louisville. He received his BS degree from the State University at Stony Brook, his MS and PhD degrees from Rutgers the State University, and a DSc (honoris causa) from the University of Guelph. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on Mars Life Detection. He is chair of NASA’s Planetary Protection Subcommittee, co-chair of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Task Force on Biodefense and co-chair of the sub-committee on Science of the National Academies of Science Committee on Science, Security and Prosperity in a Changing World. He is also a member of the Council of Graduate Schools’ Government Relations Task Force as well as the FBI Scientific Working Group on Microbial Genetics and Forensics. He previously served as President of ASM, was a member of the NIH Recombinant Advisory committee, was on the Board of Governors of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), and was a member of the DHS Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. His early research focused on oil spills and he discovered bioremediation as part of his doctoral studies. Later he turned to the molecular detection of pathogens in the environment which forms the basis for biosensors to detect biothreat agents. He is author of nearly 300 manuscripts and 20 books. He is a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology and has received the ASM Award for Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the ASM Founders Award, and the Edmund Youde Lectureship Award in Hong Kong. He regularly advises the US government on policy issues related to the deterrence of bioterrorism.
(As published in R.M. Atlas' Principles of Microbiology, Second Edition, 1996)
Looking back I can see the path with all its twists and turns that has led me to my current position in microbiology. It has been a career path full of serendipity and surprises. My fascination with science and microorganisms began early. By the seventh grade I was carrying out experimental investigations at home on the effects of electromagnetic radiation on plants and of plant hormones on microorganisms and entering projects in science fairs. After my junior year in high school I spent a summer at Cornell University in a National Science Foundation program that allowed me to take two courses in microbiology - one general survey course and the other an experimental methods course that allowed us to carry out investigative studies. The lectures on microbial ecology by Martin Alexander must have had a major impact as I remember them to this day. Mine, like all careers of microbiologists is punctuated with mentors and memories.
Despite this early interest in science and microbiology I had no intention of becoming a microbiologist. My thoughts were on medicine and saving humanity from disease. My images were of diseases like tuberculosis and polio as those diseases were still prevalent in the neighborhood in New York City where I grew up. A career as a physician, not as a scientist, seemed the likely career path as I went off to college. In fact, although I majored in biology, the only course in microbiology that I took as an undergraduate was a seminar course taught by Edward Battley where my one contribution was a paper on alcoholic fermentation followed by an evening of sampling a great variety of wines. Battley served as my undergraduate advisor and would later suggest that I explore graduate studies at Rutgers.
While my career path was aimed at medicine, my real interest at Stony Brook was learning about the world. It was the 1960s, filled with protests about everything, and I was part of that quest for a better world. I spent weekends in Greenwich Village with the poet Alan Ginsburg. I was at Woodstock. I wandered through Europe and experienced the diversity of humanity. I met my wife, Michel, at a corner of the 1967 Montreal Expo. I stood at Nietzsche's Oxford and Divinity street. And then I decided to go to graduate school and become a microbiologist.
At Rutgers I was assigned to the Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry in the Agriculture school which later became Cook College. But all graduate students took the same introductory course - a year long course taught by sixty faculty members in microbiology. The course covered the breadth of microbiology. Each lecture was specialized and in depth. Diverse unconnected topics followed one another. We were left to our own and our discussions with individual faculty to form a coherent picture of microbiology. I was fortunate to be guided by David Pramer who placed me in the laboratory of Richard Bartha to do my research and who, both then and now, has guided my career. Mentoring is an essential part of career development.
Working in Bartha's laboratory was a strange mix of formality and friendship. Bartha was born in Hungary and educated at the University of Gottingen in Germany working in the laboratory of Hans Schlegel. He brought European formality to the laboratory at Rutgers. As students we feared him and always respectfully addressed him as Dr. Bartha or Professor Bartha. But students also frequently gathered at his house for dinners, and my wife and I even spent a week camping with him and his family, it was not until I had successfully defended my PhD dissertation and he had presented me the option of whether to continue the formality of the relationship, that I first called him Richard.
During my graduate years I learned a great deal about what was involved in being a microbiologist. There were the courses but more importantly there was the laboratory. Bartha had a wonderful way of teaching students methods and then sitting back while the results were generated. Initially, I tried to work on two projects - one a physiological project on the requirement for nickel by hydrogen-utilizing bacteria and the other an ecological project on the microbial utilization of petroleum hydrocarbons. I had little success with either and Bartha was clearly concerned by my lack of progress. David Pramer would later describe how Bartha had asked the faculty to remove me from the program because I had been there for a year and had yet to publish a paper. I was, fortunately, given more time to develop as a scientist.
Bartha went off on a sabbatical at Woods Hole with Holger Jannasch and I continued to muddle around the laboratory. I still didn't understand what it took to successfully carry out a scientific investigation that could withstand critical peer review. I decided to focus my efforts on the oil degradation project and specifically the investigation of the factors limiting petroleum biodegradation in the oceans. This was just over a year after the Torrey Canyon oil spill and there was great public interest in the environment. My naivete proved useful. I didn't know that there were questions that weren't to be asked because of scientific dogma. By taking the wrong path I made new discoveries and that inspired me to work harder. I began to work day and night, tied to the laboratory bench by a quest for discovery. Our Saint Bernard dog, Bernie, would lay outside the laboratory door, patiently waiting, perhaps even to save me if an experiment went awry. Many of the experiments were with flammable solvents and more than one of Bartha's students had blown up the laboratory, on one occasion forcing Bartha to escape through the window and lower himself two stories using a rope. Fortunately, there were no injuries for which I was responsible. My wife and many of the other graduate student spouses would gather each night in the department's conference room. Between experimental procedures I would join them and we would eat, talk, and drink. Our social life developed around the University and we still have many good friends from those days.
In retrospect, it's hard to understand why our work on oil biodegradation was so important. The fact that low nutrient concentrations in the oceans limit the rates of hydrocarbon biodegradation should have been obvious. That overcoming those limitations could speed up the removal of petroleum pollutants also should have been clear. But it wasn't, and my first scientific presentation before the American Chemical Society showing that petroleum biodegradation in the oceans is nutrient limited was so controversial that the meeting had to be adjourned and the next scheduled paper cancelled. And who would have predicted that from our work bioremediation would emerge as a major biotechnological solution for cleaning up the environment of many pollutants; or that twenty years later I would work with Exxon to apply what I had discovered as a graduate student to the bioremediation of the Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill. While those outcomes were unpredicted in 1972, it was clear by the time I finished graduate studies that I was on the road to becoming a productive scientist. Bartha's patience was rewarded with 10 publications from my graduate studies. Moreover, we had established a collaborative relationship that continues to this day.
After finishing graduate studies, I took a postdoctoral position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology in an Antarctic research program that was part of the NASA Mars Viking lander project. The idea was to use the Antarctic dry valleys as a test site for detection systems that would be sent to Mars. Unfortunately, several aircraft that were supposed to carry me to the Antarctic either crashed or developed mechanical problems; so I was left working in a freezer room in the laboratory in Pasadena. At lunch we would engage in great philosophical discussions asking what is life? and how we could design a universal experimental system that would detect all life - any time and any place. One day I proposed that I take the system, which measured the conversion of carbon dioxide to organic matter (one of the few universal reactions of living systems), to the Arctic. The idea was accepted and I was off to the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow Alaska. There besides testing the life detection system that eventually would be sent to Mars, I renewed my studies on oil biodegradation for the Office of Naval Research.
I continued working in Alaska after moving to the University of Louisville. I would spend summers working with graduate students exploring the microbial population of tundra and coastal waters. We expanded our studies to work through the winter. We began diving under the ice - even when surface air temperatures were -50 degrees Celcius - to study the diversity of microbial communities and the abilities of indigenous microbial populations to degrade pollutants. Many of these studies employed numerical taxonomy to characterize diverse microbial populations, requiring extensive laboratory and computer analyses. I found myself managing a laboratory of eighteen people with all the inherent personnel and fiscal problems.
While the research was going well and was well funded, I felt left out of the molecular biology revolution. My research program was still focused on biochemistry and ecology. So I encouraged some graduate students to begin studying the environmental fate of recombinant bacteria. The aim was to detect and contain genetically engineered microorganisms that might deliberately be released into the environment. We explored methods for containing genetically engineered microorganisms by using suicide vectors by working together with Asim Bej, Mike Perlin, and Sorin Molin. We struggled to increase the sensitivity for detecting microorganisms in soil and water. We couldn't do better than about 10,000 bacteria per gram of soil.Then one of my graduate students, Robert Steffan, received a vial of enzyme and some suggestions on how it might help us. It turned out to be taq polymerase and we were soon running polymerase chain reactions (PCR). I have never asked where the enzyme came from. I was just thrilled that we could pioneer the environmental applications of PCR. Within a year I could proclaim that we could detect a single genetically engineered microorganism in one hundred grams of soil or one liter of water. Along with several other students and colleagues we would use PCR to detect pathogens and indicator organisms in waters, including the bacterium Legionella and the protozoan Giardia. We even figured out how to use PCR for differentiating live from dead microorganisms. We used PCR to identify areas of significant health risks. Not only had I moved into the realm of molecular biology but I had also managed to join environmental and health related research.
With the research successes came local, national, and international recognition. There were requests for presentations at scientific meetings and I and my students found ourselves frequently travelling around the world. I was ill-prepared for the travel demands which have grown to almost one trip per week. There were also requests to serve on various committees. Juggling time became a major challenge. At one point I found myself serving on twenty committees at the University of Louisville alone. Member of the faculty senate, head of the arts and sciences personnel committee, head of the biology department's graduate committee, and chair of the University's academic excellence committee. The time commitment was enormous and drew me away from teaching and research. Later, I became Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences College and was even more removed from the aspects of academic life that I enjoy. After three years in that administrative post I began my return to the laboratory and classroom.
While I now limit my committee activities within the University, I continue to carry out extensive service at the national and international level. I will never forget how my hand trembled when I voted to approve the first human gene therapy experiments as a member of the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC). That vote followed two years of discussions about safety, ethics, and science. Those debates often were heated - as I discovered when failing to notice the CNN cameras capturing me clashing with a woman representing handicapped groups over whether medical researchers should try to find a cure for blindness. I argued that bringing our understanding of molecular biology to the treatment of disease represented a historic step that would better human health. Besides my service on the RAC and various other government boards, I chair the American Society for Microbiology Public and Scientific Affairs Board Environment Committee. That activity frequently leads me to Washington where I testify before Congress on appropriations for science and advise the Administration and Congress on topics ranging from environmental biotechnology, to safe drinking water, and protecting the world against the use of biological weapons. Hardly a day goes by without dozens of faxes and E-mail messages about national and international events on which the American Society for Microbiology offers advice. Helping shape government policy on such important topics is an unexpected role for a scientist, but one that a handful of microbiologists carry out with great devotion.
While developing an active research and service program I carry out an extensive teaching program - frequently racing between the classroom and the airport. As the only microbiologist in a biology department I have responsibility for all the undergraduate and graduate courses in microbiology. At the undergraduate level I teach courses for biology majors, premeds, nurses, and others. At the graduate level I teach courses in food microbiology, industrial microbiolgy and microbial ecology. My students demand that I relate microbiology to their real world experiences and career aspirations. I find myself connecting fundamental information about microorganisms with practical aspects of microbiology - explaining the practical consequences of microbial physiology, ecology and molecular biology in practical terms such as disease treatment to which students can relate. Unlike many colleagues who think teaching interferes with research I have always found that it is the interactions with students that drives me further in quest of knowledge and forces me to stay current with the full scope of microbiological information.
My interest in teaching has also led me to write textbooks. When I began teaching microbial ecology only a few textbooks had been written in that field and I tried teaching using only handouts and assigned readings. My students objected and I soon found myself writing a microbial ecology textbook with Richard Bartha. It took several years and thousands of our own dollars but eventually we had a first rate book that is now headed for its fourth edition. Soon I again found myself writing my own textbooks for introductory microbiology courses - trying to provide practical connections to fundamental microbiological knowledge. With each new book there are new challenges. It gets more difficult to decide what information to include, especially with the explosion of molecular biology, and how to communicate that information in relevant terms.
With each new book I have to learn more and more. I turn into the student, realizing the need for further education. My quest for discovery and integrating knowledge seemingly never ends. Such is the life and diversity of being a microbiologist...