In 1964, Indiana University microbiologist Thomas Brock made his first trip to Yellowstone National Park. He was immediately struck by the hot springs teeming with microbial life that no one seemed to know much about (1). Brock secured funding from the National Science Foundation to pursue his curiosity and investigated those bizarre microbes that thrived at temperatures hot enough to cook most other organisms. 

As Brock and undergraduate student Hudson Freeze carefully fished samples of pink and yellow microbes out of the scalding waters, neither they nor their funders could have suspected that their research would play a key role in utterly revolutionizing the study of genetics.

In 1969, the pair published their description of a new bacterial species, Thermus aquaticus, which survives temperatures up to 79^oC (2). As a heat loving bacterium, T. aquaticus — later nicknamed Taq — possesses enzymes that function at high temperatures. In 1976, University of Cincinnati biologists Alice Chien, David Edgar, and John Trela purified one of those enzymes, a heat stable polymerase responsible for copying DNA (3). 

At first glance, a polymerase from this odd little Yellowstone microbe might not seem like an especially impactful discovery. Yet a heat stable DNA polymerase was exactly what biochemist Kary Mullis needed to develop polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (4). Today, PCR is an indispensable tool used throughout biology and medicine. 

For their discovery, Brock and Freeze received the Golden Goose Award in 2013 (4). This award recognizes federally funded research projects that initially seemed esoteric but eventually led to major breakthroughs in areas like biomedicine, agriculture, and computing. Other winners include the team who discovered and identified applications for green fluorescent protein from jellyfish, which is now used as a reporter of gene expression in biomedical research, and a team who originally studied lizard venoms, which led to a new drug for diabetes. 

These awards illustrate the importance of curiosity driven “basic” research. Even though this research may not have obvious applications right away, it may become a key ingredient in innovations in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. 

As Richard Schrock, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry said in an interview, “The value of basic research is you discover something you didn’t expect — that nobody expected. And it’s where almost everything we now expect came from,” he said. “My work had applications. I just didn’t know it at the time.” (5)

It is crucial that we continue to fund basic research, not only because it gives us a better understanding of our world, but also because it forms the foundation for future biomedical breakthroughs. Today’s basic research could be tomorrow’s life saving drug, but we will never know unless we make the investment today. 

References

1. Rediscovering Yellowstone - Tom Brock. (2017). at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdkTW30Gv64>
2. Brock, T. D. & Freeze, H. Thermus aquaticus gen. n. and sp. n., a Nonsporulating Extreme Thermophile. J Bacteriol  98, 289–297 (1969).
3. Chien, A., Edgar, D. B. & Trela, J. M. Deoxyribonucleic acid polymerase from the extreme thermophile Thermus aquaticus. J Bacteriol  127, 1550–1557 (1976).
4. 2013: Thermus Aquaticus. The Golden Goose Award (2014). 
5. The Brilliance of Basic Research. MIT Spectrum (2018).