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We spoke to Jim Smith (JS), head of the Developmental Biology Laboratory, and Tim Mohun (TM), head of the Heart Development Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute about the research article they published on Wellcome Open Research today, the benefits of the platform and why they think other Wellcome grantees should follow their lead.

Wellcome Open Research launches today with its first articles. Why is this significant?

JS: From our perspective, this is a new way of drawing other researchers’ attention to our work. It makes sure that the investment made by Wellcome is fully realised, and that the hard work of our colleagues is properly recognised.

TM: Wellcome has invested a great deal of money funding the ‘Deciphering the Mechanisms of Developmental Disorders’ (DMDD) research programme but because of its nature as an ambitious screening project, only a small proportion of that work is ever likely to figure in conventional publications. All of it has potential value and could be of help or interest to individual researchers. Wellcome Open Research allows us to present our data as a resource for others to use and to provide summaries of our progress as the project proceeds.

Please give a brief introduction into your research area

TM: It turns out that around 1 in 3 genes that we have are absolutely essential for embryo development and survival; so-called “embryonic lethal genes”. We are using mice to try and identify why these genes are so important and what goes wrong in embryo development when these genes are mutated. We do this by carefully analysing the structure of mouse embryos in which the gene has been removed, looking to see what tissues or organs are abnormal as a result. We also look at whether the abnormalities affect the placenta that supports embryo development and use modern genomics to see how gene removal affects the overall profile of which genes are active in the early embryo. Together, these can give us important clues about why a gene might be essential for the embryo. This in turn will identify candidate genes that might be responsible for human congenital abnormalities that affect a significant proportion of newborn babies.

All data used in this study is available from the DMDD website. Why is Open Data important?

JS: Conventional publications usually present a synthesis of the work carried out by researchers, and journals will often only publish ‘positive results’ that conform to a particular hypothesis. Open data involves making entire datasets available so that other scientists can analyse the results in any way they like, and it also allows the publication of ‘negative results’ that might not agree with previously-published work or might not fit a particular model. This allows us to make the best use of hard-won data, and by publishing negative results it encourages replication and reproducibility.

TM: We cannot possibly study the embryonic lethal genes in the depth and detail that is needed to fully understand their function. Our job in the DMDD is to identify these genes and then make a first simple attempt at identifying their likely role, through cataloguing what the impact of removing them has on development of the embryo. This information provides initial clues that researchers can then use to plan more detailed studies. So for us, open data is absolutely essential!

DMDD’s work is only of any use if we can make it widely available to the scientific community. That’s why we aim to show everything we find in our research on the DMDD website. We try and present the data in such a way that anyone can see what we saw, read our interpretation, but most importantly make their own assessment and come to their own conclusions. We can’t possibly match the collective expertise of the research community in understanding embryo development, but as long as we show all our data, the true experts will be able to draw conclusions and make connections that we will quite probably miss.

Why did you decide to publish this article on Wellcome Open Research?

JS: This was the perfect opportunity for us to make our results available quickly and in a very accessible manner. The Wellcome Open Research platform is an exciting initiative, and we are very pleased to be involved right at the beginning.

TM: For us, the timing was perfect. We had reached a bit of a milestone in the DMDD project, having analysed a sufficiently large number of different embryonic lethal genes that we could begin to take an overview of the data and draw some initial conclusions. We wanted to share these with the research community as quickly as possible because we think the conclusions are interesting, important and in part puzzling. There are other studies like DMDD being undertaken or planned internationally and they will be able to learn from our experience. We also wanted to allow others to analyse our data in their own ways. Our effort is only a first simple attempt and there will no doubt be other ways in which it can be studied which could reveal all sorts of conclusions that we will have missed.

Would you encourage other Wellcome grantees to publish on Wellcome Open Research?

JS: Speaking both as a researcher and as Wellcome’s new Director of Science, the answer is yes. As a researcher, it is a fantastic way to get your data out there. As a funder, we want to make sure that the work we support is made available to other members of the scientific community as efficiently as possible. Wellcome Open Research is the way to go.

TM: It’s a great way to make all sorts of data publicly available so others get a chance to benefit from it. Lots of research never sees the light of day. We only ever see the choice results and final conclusions in conventional scientific publications, but rarely all the accumulated data on which those studies rest. For screening studies like ours which are necessarily limited in depth but wide in scope, publications like Wellcome Open Research give the opportunity to make our data available so that other scientists can use it to help advance their work and avoid pointless duplication of effort.

For more information about the DMDD research programme, visit dmdd.org.uk or follow @dmdduk for updates.