The Waksman Institute's mission is to conduct research in microbial molecular genetics, developmental molecular genetics, plant molecular genetics, and structural and computational biology. We also provide a catalyst for general university initiatives, a life science infrastructure, undergraduate and graduate education, and a public service function for the state.

The principal mission of the institute is research. Although the major emphasis in the early days was in microbiology, it soon changed to molecular genetics and was broadened to include organisms other than viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Fruit flies and plants were already studied under previous directors. Major new initiatives under the current director cover computational and structural biology and further emphasis on molecular genetics of the regulation of gene expression and biomolecular interactions.

The new expansion has stimulated the introduction of interdisciplinary programs with chemical and biochemical engineering, chemistry, computer science, and plant science. Evolution of the research mission from the early days to today has led from a diversity of disciplines centered around antibiotics to the unified discipline of molecular genetics with a more diverse set of biological problems. Today the institute employs faculty teams that concentrate on certain classes of organisms amenable to genetic analysis such as bacteria and fungi (Escherichia coli and yeast), animal systems (e.g., Drosophila and C. elegans), and plants (Arabidopsis, tobacco, and maize). Although the institute focuses on basic questions in microbial, animal, and plant research, it continues to engage in extensive technology transfer of its basic discoveries. Historically, in fact, the institute is rooted in technology transfer. Its origin can be traced back to 1939 when Dr. Waksman entered into an agreement with Merck & Company of Rahway to study the production of antimicrobial agents by soil bacteria. Within four years, streptomycin was discovered. It was patented and licensed to the pharmaceutical industry by Rutgers, which received approximately $16 million in royalties from antibiotics discovered in Dr. Waksman's laboratory. This money was used, in part, to build and endow the institute.

The Institute is a research unit of the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. It receives a budget from the state to support the recruitment and appointment of faculty on separate budgeted research (SBR) lines that are split with instructional (IDR) lines from decanal units of the campus. This facilitates faculty appointments to departments in different disciplines and enriches the interdisciplinary research unique to the institute. The decanal units simultaneously receive an enriched instructional and service program in addition to their traditional departmental tasks consistent with the mission of a state university. The faculty of the Institute also participates in the various graduate programs, thereby becoming fully integrated into the state university system.

Facilities include: (1) a reading room with over 20,000 volumes on microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics; (2) the molecular biology computing laboratory serving over 400 users; (3) a confocal microscopy suite for molecular and cellular biology; (4) a crystallography suite for macromolecular studies; and (5) a modern computerized cell and cell products fermentation facility that has completed equipment validation and prepared standard operating procedures for such equipment. This validation allows us to meet requests for the manufacture of preclinical products under cGLP (current Good Laboratory Practices) and cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) compliance.

The Institute currently consists of a membership of sixteen resident faculty and three each of faculty with non-resident membership and adjunct membership. We have four members with emeritus status. Only faculty with resident and non-resident membership are on the Institute's salary lines. The Institute accommodates two research assistant professors, seven visiting investigators, fifteen research associates, thirty-six postdoctoral researchers, seventeen technical assistants, and thirty-three graduate students. Its total resident personnel is currently 141, which does not include undergraduate students doing independent research. Our total budget in the last academic year was $14.5 million with only $3.15 million from state sources. External grant support represents the major portion of our budget, providing excellent leverage to the 22% that the State of New Jersey contributes.

Table I. Annual revenue of the institute per faculty member.

If we track external funding for the last six years, income per faculty member has risen every year, setting a new record in the history of the Institute. Between 1995 and today, external funding has risen from 205 to 526 thousand dollars per salaried faculty member or 2.6 times. Last year was a particularly productive year bringing an increase of 36%. However, state funds have decreased by 6.15% and endowment income by 19% compared to last year. State funds were higher last year because of the "Rutgers Reinvest Program" that supported the assembly of a plant genome sequencing facility. The endowment was temporarily reduced to finance the second floor of the Braun building. Income will be restored through rent payments from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Two new faculty members, Andy Singson and Chris Rongo, were added last year. Andy came from Emory University in Atlanta from Dr. Steven L'Hernault's laboratory. He is a native of the Philippines and got his training in the U.S. at the University of California, first at Davis as an undergraduate and then at San Diego as Ph.D. student with James Posakony. His work is concerned with mechanisms of sperm-egg interactions during fertilization using Caenorhabditis elegans as a genetic model whose whole genome has been recently sequenced. He started in January and has already recruited two graduate students, one technician, and one postdoctoral researcher. Chris came from UC Berkeley from Dr. Joshua Kaplan’s laboratory. He was an undergraduate at UC San Diego and a Ph.D. student with Ruth Lehmann at the Whitehead Institute of MIT in Boston. Chris' work is concerned with synapse formation in a neuron also taking advantage of the completely sequenced C. elegans genome. With these two additions, our critical mass in both fly and worm genetics is quite good considering similar recruitment on our campus at the Medical School and in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.

It is with great sadness that I report the sudden death of Sewell Champe, Professor Emeritus of the Institute. Sewell was only sixty-six and retired just four years ago. I still remember Sidney Brenner's lecture in honor of Sewell at the occasion of his retirement, who was widely recognized for his early work on the discovery of nonsense mutations.

Last year we celebrated the discovery of neomycin fifty years ago and sigma factor thirty years ago. While the discovery of neomycin was critical to the establishment of the Institute because of the royalty income, it actually happened five years before the Institute opened. In contrast, the discovery of the sigma factor happened at the Institute. The sigma factor was the first regulatory protein that was biochemically purified in two places simultaneously–by Travers and Burgess at Harvard and Dunn and Bautz at the Institute. The four decided to jointly publish their findings thirty years ago in Nature. Interestingly, Travers and Burgess were both in Jim Watson's laboratory, whose name does not appear on the publication. Both anniversaries were celebrated with a symposium at the Institute. In particular, Doug Eveleigh helped in organizing and raising the funds for the neomycin symposium. Hubert Lechevalier, the co-discoverer, came and joined the celebration. Two interesting subjects were part of the program. One was the occurrence of drug resistance and its threat to combat infectious diseases. In particular, the spread of drug resistance through the use of antibiotics in animal feed and the reoccurrence of tuberculosis were highlighted. Drug resistance was also discussed in connection with food derived from genetically engineered plants. Concerns about transgenic plants selected with antibiotics as a potential source for drug resistance in treating infectious diseases that have been raised by anti-biotech groups have no scientific basis because the same genes are present in microorganisms found in every kitchen sink. The sigma symposium provided highlights of transcription as a molecular machine as well as the historic perspective by the four authors.