International Love Data Week is a worldwide event in which university libraries organize events, workshops, and games to help researchers appreciate their data. Love Data Week always falls on the same week as St. Valentine’s Day, and this year took place February 9-13th. Every year, there is a different theme. This year’s theme was “Where is the data?” CSHL Library and Archives was proud to showcase some of the data from the past. For the works of Matthew Meselson, Janet Mertz, Carol Grieder, and many others, their data ended up in the archives of CSHL. In a special exhibit displayed throughout the week, visitors were offered the unique opportunity to see how scientists create, collect, and organize their data.
The exhibit included lab notes, blots, pedigrees, correspondences, photographs, and other data. Exhibition highlights include:
Pedigree charts and subject forms from the Eugenics Records Office
Eugenicists employed pedigrees to bolster their claims that not only were physical traits strictly inherited as simple Mendelian characters, but so too were mental, emotional, and behavioral characteristics.
Original manuscript drafts of “The Genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans” (1974) by Sydney Brenner
Brenner introduced the use of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a system for tracing the birth and death of every cell in a living animal. In seeking an organism to study, he wanted an animal in which he could map the complete wiring of the nervous system and make mutations to study the function of an individual. Because the animal is a hermaphrodite, making mutants requires procedures that differ from those employed with, for example, fruit flies. Brenner, along with postdoctoral fellow John Sulston, unraveled how C. elegans grows and specializes in its trajectory from a single cell to a full-grown worm. Their research launched the study of many additional complex physiological phenomena, including aging, nerve cell function, and transmission of chemical signals from the outside of a cell to its inside.
Robert Waterston and John Sulston’s C. elegans Research
The C. elegans genome project was spearheaded by former Brenner postdoctoral fellows John Sulston and Robert Waterston, in which scientists spelled out the complete sequence of the organism’s DNA. This endeavor, completed in 1998, produced the first whole genome sequence of an animal.
X-ray Films Created by Carol Greider
These films were created as part of Greider’s research at Elizabeth Blackburn’s laboratory. Greider worked with the tetrahymena, a freshwater single-celled organism, chosen because it contains a large number of telomeres. This made the organism perfect for Greider’s research on the lengthening of telomeres and its links to studying cancer and aging.
Corn kernels that Barbara McClintock meticulously categorized.
McClintock’s studies and observations of mutations in the kernels of maize (corn) led to her discovery of transposable genetic elements. Although the scientific community largely ignored her concepts, advances in molecular and microbial genetics ultimately proved her findings correct. She is now credited as the discoverer of transposable—or “jumping”—genes, a discovery which is at the very root of much of today’s research in genetic engineering.
In addition, we opened the rare book collection, in which visitors could view rare manuscripts and early editions of various topics surrounding the history of genetics.
The Library is here to help you with organizing, sharing, and writing about your data, and even finding a place for it to go. Maybe one day your data will end up in the CSHL archives for future scientists to admire.
If you ever need help with data management, contact Jackie Gunther, PhD, the Research Engagement and Data Curator at the library.