Wittgenstein Award Laureate
Wittgenstein Award Laureate 2005 Barry J Dickson
Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) 
BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN MOLECULES AND BEHAVIOUR
Barry Dickson’s research area lies between two established fields. ”In molecular neuroscience (or molecular and cellular biology) people are trying to understand processes at the level of individual molecules – how channels open and close, how neurons communicate. On the other hand, people working at the systems level want to understand how the brain as a whole processes information.”
Dickson and his team at Vienna’s Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) come from the direction of molecular and cellular biology but ”we are trying to build links to the systems level. The level between is that of neural networks. From this starting point you can try to understand higher functions such as behaviour, emotions, thoughts etc.” However, the establishment and properties of the networks should be clarified at the molecular level. Dickson, an Australian by birth, is widely accepted as one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of neural networks. In 1998, after spells studying and researching in San Diego, Zurich, Berkeley and Zurich again, he found his provisional second homeland in Vienna, at the Vienna Biocentre, where the IMP and the Academy of Sciences’ IMBA are neighbours, not only geographically. From January 2006 he has been Director of the IMP. Half a year previously Dickson was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize. He was especially honoured by the award because of the highly professional manner in which prizewinners are selected. ”I am in a position to compare the procedure with the way in which science is funded in Switzerland and in the USA and I am often required to review grant applications. I can only say that decisions are taken in Austria in the best way possible: a thoroughly international jury takes decisions based purely on scientific criteria.” Regrettably this does not appear to be the case for all funding organizations in Austria.
Dickson can understand the need for applied research but nevertheless
feels that basic research in Austria requires better support. After
all, applied work is based on results from basic research.
As far as the consequences of his Prize are concerned, he is not yet
able to say much. To date he has hired only one co-worker, who will
carry out bioinformatics analysis. However, Dickson is hardly short
of plans. The analysis will serve towards building up a library that
should eventually contain the specification of every single gene of
the fruit fly. This organism – Drosophila melanogaster – is the one
on which his neural networks are based.
Dickson and colleagues have discovered that male fruit flies perform a courtship display that is controlled by a network in the brain in which approximately 2,000 of the total 150,000 brain cells are involved. (The entire procedure can be visualized under a light microscope.) It has now been shown that the network, which is also present in females, is under the control of a particular gene. This gene is active in males and inactive in females. ”However,” says Dickson, ”this is not a satisfactory answer because the gene only controls the expression of other genes. We still have to find the other genes, the ones that actually make the difference.”
He hopes to discover what the genes and networks do, ”and how they do it, at the molecular level”. And this is just where the Wittgenstein Prize comes in useful. It will permit us to develop the techniques we need on the systems level.” Dickson feels perfectly happy in Vienna. ”It’s fine, I like it.” He is a touch homesick but in his area of study it would be impossible for him to find a comparable position in Australia. A stroke of luck for Austria.
