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(e.g. seaweeds, barnacles). This
coating adds signicantly to the drag
of large ships and thus increases
fuel consumption. The only chemical
solution known to prevent this from
happening is tributyl tin, which
was banned in the late 1980s on
environmental grounds.
Jim Callow at the University of
Birmingham is among the very small
number of people investigating this
phenomenon and looking for new
solutions. Our main test species is
the green macroalga (seaweed) Ulva
but we also use the unicellular diatom
Navicula specically because diatoms
show opposite adhesion preferences,
Callow explains. Ulva tends to adhere
most strongly to hydrophilic coatings
while diatoms such as Navicula
adhere most strongly to hydrophobic
coatings, especially those that are
silicone-based. The frontiers of this
subject lie in the development of the
next generation of marine antifouling/
fouling-release coatings based on
amphiphilic surface-active block
copolymers coatings that are able to
resist both types of algae.
A nal application of diatoms brings
us back to climate change some
species of diatoms are investigated
with the aim of developing them for
the industrial production of biofuels.
This sounds surprising, as their most
conspicuous attribute is their silica
shell, which doesnt help with the
biofuel production and would have to
be recycled.
However, as Krger explains, some
species can survive without silicon.
Phaeodactylum tricornutum, for
instance, can switch between three
different morphotypes in response
to specic environmental conditions,
and only one of the forms needs
silicon (Protist (2011) 162, 462481).
The idea is that if we remove
certain nutrients like nitrogen or
silicon from the medium, the diatoms
accumulate lipids. The challenge is
to nd conditions where they do that
and still grow to good yields, Krger
explains. Here, as in the geochemical
role of diatoms discussed above,
progress is limited by the incomplete
understanding of the molecular
physiology of diatoms. More research
into these intriguing organisms is
denitely needed.
Michael Gross is a science writer based at
Oxford. He can be contacted via his web
page at www.michaelgross.co.uk
Both are members of the
Norwegian Academy of Science
and Letters and have been elected
to the European Molecular Biology
Organization (EMBO). They have
also been recognized with a wealth
of scientic and research prizes
over the years, including the 2011
Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and
the 2011 Anders Jahres Award for
Medical Research.
What turned you on to biology in
the first place?
Edvard: For my part it was quite
random because I was interested
in lots of things. I wanted to
start with nuclear physics, and
I was interested in geology, and
evolution. It was actually quite
random. I began in chemistry,
inorganic chemistry, and I thought
that was boring, so then I turned
to psychology. And met May-Britt.
We soon found out that the few
pages in our textbooks that were
about neuroscience were the most
interesting. And then we turned
to the brain. This was in the early
1980s.
What was it like to make
the transition from studying
traditional psychology to studying
neuroscience, as you have done?
May-Britt: There was no transition.
When we decided to start in
psychology, both of us had this
Edvard and
May-Britt Moser
Interviewed by Nancy Bazilchuk
and Hege J. Tunstad
Edvard and May-Britt Moser are
the founding directors of the
Norwegian University of Science
and Technologys (NTNU) Centre
for the Biology of Memory and
the Kavli Institute for Systems
Neuroscience (KI/CBM). They grew
up on two small but adjacent islands
off the west coast of Norway. They
rst met in high school, but didnt
really get to know each other until
their paths crossed as students at
the University of Oslo. They found
out that they had similar interests
and decided to go into psychology
together, graduating with degrees
in Psychology from the University of
Oslo in 1990. At the same time, they
found out they had an interest in
each other as well.
The pair obtained their PhDs
in Neurophysiology from the
University of Oslo in 1995, under
the supervision of Per Andersen.
They have also worked periodically
with Richard Morris at the Centre
for Neuroscience, University of
Edinburgh from 19921996, and
with John OKeefe at the University
College of London in 1996. Both
were appointed associate professors
at NTNU in 1996, and full professors
in 1998 (E.M.) and 2000 (M.B.M.).
Their work at NTNU has focused
on how spatial location and spatial
memory are computed in the brain.
Their most famous achievement to
date is probably the discovery in
2005 of entorhinal grid cells, which
points to the entorhinal cortex as
a hub for the brain network that
enables us to nd our way. In
conjunction with researchers at the
KI/CBM, they have also shown how
a variety of functional cell types in
the entorhinal microcircuit contribute
to representation of self-location,
how the outputs of the circuit are
used by memory networks in the
hippocampus, and how episodic
memories are separated from each
other in the early stages of the
hippocampal memory storage.
Q & A
Photo credit: Ned Alley.
Current Biology Vol 22 No 15
R586
eagerness to understand the brain
and behaviour and the connections
between them. We really wanted to
understand how the brain functions,
so even during our rst course, in our
rst year in psychology, we started
to wander around the university and
ask professors, Whats the best
way for us to study the brain and
behaviour? and they would say, I
dont know, but you can get these
papers, read them, talk to these
people, and then we started to build
a network. We nally ended up with
Per Andersen and his group. That
was fantastic.
Edvard: We already knew more
or less that we wanted to merge
psychology and neurophysiology
during the rst year of our
psychology studies, but it wasnt
possible in Norway or even most
places in the world at that time.
Moving from psychology to Pers lab
was still the best start we could get
at the time.
What is the most important
personality trait that has enabled
you both to work as successful
researchers?
Edvard: This is difcult to answer, but
I think what has helped us has been
to work hard on the question we
want to ask before actually starting
an experiment. It is also partly about
doing things in ways that are different
from what others do.
May-Britt: I think you need
to be curious, at least that is
my motivation. I really want to
understand things. I typically
compare it to doing a puzzle, and
getting all the pieces together and
nally getting to see what is in front
of me. That makes me really happy.
Edvard: I also believe that we
have beneted from trying as hard
as we can to make sure that our
interpretations are justied. This
often means years of extra work but
the advantage in the end is that the
conclusions tend to stand.
May-Britt: Our personalities are
quite complementary. We got some
good advice from our supervisor,
Per Andersen. He told us that if we
were to be successful, we had to
work together because we were
so different and yet contributed so
much to each other. He thought that
if we worked as a team, that would
be a recipe for success. Maybe he
was right.
What is the best advice youve been
given as a scientist?
May-Britt: I think the best advice
is that you have to collect data and
analyse them until you are able to
compose a true story. When you are
close to being convinced that your
story is right, that then gives you
the strong motivation to do all the
control experiments to verify it. So
you have an idea a story about
what you think is going on and
you test it, you verify it, and then
you publish your results. When you
do all your control experiments, you
should be able to either conrm or
support your idea or not that is
not so important but what you
present needs to be a full, veried
story. If you dont understand it,
you shouldnt publish yet.
Edvard: I agree with that. I think that
is something that we learned from
several of our previous supervisors,
that you should simply do things
slowly and be sure that what you
have is correct before you publish.
If you knew what you know now
earlier in your career, would you
still pursue the same career path
or would you have done something
different?
Edvard: I would denitely go into
neuroscience because it is one
of the fastest evolving sciences
today. There is so much happening,
and so many questions that can
be addressed that couldnt be
addressed 20 years ago. But if I
were to do it again, I might consider
studying more maths and physics,
which are not part of the traditional
curriculum in neuroscience. Our
eld is becoming more and more
quantitative, so I would advise
younger people in my eld to make
sure they have some understanding
of maths and physics in addition to
the more traditional biology-oriented
subjects.
May Britt: I am in love with
neuroscience, I agree with Edvard
that I would still go into the eld,
but if I could have studied more
molecular biology and more
chemistry, that would have been
great.
What do you think are the big
questions to be answered next in
your eld?
Edvard: The big question that
can now be answered is how the
brain operates at the hundreds or
thousands of neurons level, and how
those neurons interact to produce
behaviour and thoughts and feelings.
I think in 2030 years we will not
only be able to say a lot about
simple cognitive functions like how
memories and perceptions of space
arise, but that we will also have
some understanding of thoughts and
planning and decisions, and maybe
even a little bit about what we call
consciousness.
How do you combine thinking
about big picture questions and the
technical difculties of answering
those questions?
May-Britt: When we were students
we used to talk about people who
were stuck with their methods,
because they had their method and
then they had to dene their question
around the method. Its more like a
factory and not so creative.
Edvard: What I think we have tried to
do is to say, This is our big question,
and how can we split it into smaller
questions? Then we gure out how
to answer the smaller questions,
and at the same time we ask, is
it possible to answer this using a
different method? Can we learn
from someone else, can we bring
someone to Trondheim who can
show us? I think you have to avoid
being restricted by the methods
that you have, that is extremely
important. And you need to be brave.
How have the questions that you
are trying to answer changed
over time? May-Britt: The big
question hasnt changed: we want to
understand mental function how
the brain works how the brain
computes all these mental functions.
Edvard: But the focus has changed
from when we started out. We
started with memory and that was
what we were working on for at least
the rst ve or ten years and here in
Trondheim. Then we stumbled over
the space network and grid cells in
the entorhinal cortex and described
that, and now we are beginning with
the mechanisms of these grid cells
and trying to understand neural
computation in general. How does
the cortex compute? What are the
algorithms that the many hundreds
of thousands of neurons use when
they produce a behaviour? That is
the general question. And we are
Magazine
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using space and memory as ways
to try to understand that general
question. So we started out with a
focus on memory and now we are a
bit more ambitious, we really want to
understand the whole thing. But this
is also possible because of all the
new methods that are available. You
can do things that were very difcult
some 1020 years ago.
May-Britt: But I dont think I agree
with you that we stumbled over
the network that makes spatial
navigation possible. Of course we
couldnt know what we would get
but it was planned.
Edvard: It denitely came out of
ideas that we had about where to
search for spatial cells, but still,
the grid pattern was a surprise to
everyone.
May Britt: Oh, absolutely.
Do you have a favourite paper?
Edvard: I am very much inuenced
by the early work of Hubel and
Wiesel. They had a series of papers
in the 1960s, some of which were
published before I was born. They
showed how individual cells in the
visual cortex decompose the visual
image, they described how the
different cell types of that cortex
were organized functionally, and
they suggested how those signals
could be computed from their inputs,
at a time when there was very little
computational neuroscience. Their
brave and important questions
and their approach to solving them
is a kind of model for me, and it
inspired me when we began with the
entorhinal cortex.
What are the other passions in your
life?
Edvard: I have one passion and that
is volcanoes. Because we have jobs
where we travel a lot, I have had a
lot of opportunities to visit volcanoes
everywhere.
May Britt: And it started on a
volcano, we got engaged on
Kilimanjaro. But while I also enjoy
volcanoes, my own passion is the
sea.
Norwegian University of Science and
Technology, Faculty of Medicine, Kavli
Institute for Systems Neuroscience/Centre
for Biology of Memory, Medical Technical
Research Centre, Postboks 8905,
7491 Trondheim, Norway.
E-mail: [email protected],
[email protected]
and sizes. Cheese can be eaten fresh
at this point, or the wheels can be left
to age in a damp, cool place.
It is during the aging stage of
cheesemaking that cheese is truly
transformed from fresh cheese
into the myriad avors, aromas, and
textures of mature cheese. As a
normal part of the aging process,
starter cultures and non-starter lactic
acid bacteria continue to grow and
metabolize the interior of the cheese,
while the surface of a cheese is
colonized by bacteria and fungi that
form a multispecies biolm, termed the
rind of the cheese (Figure 1).
How do microbes impact the avor,
smell, and texture of cheese? Much
of the diversity in the avor, smell, and
texture of cheese can be attributed
to microbiology. Microbes have a rich
assembly of metabolic capacities, and
through the production of digestive
enzymes and small molecules, microbes
contribute to the distinct character of a
cheese. However, variations in cheese
production can lead to the preferential
growth of different groups of microbes.
First, the source and treatment (i.e.,
raw vs. pasteurized) of milk used for
cheesemaking can lead to differences
in microbial diversity. Subsequently,
changes in the pH, salt, moisture,
and temperature of a cheese during
the initial stages of cheesemaking, or
during aging, can dramatically impact
the physiology of cheese-associated
microbes.
The contribution of certain microbes
to cheese has been well characterized,
and pure cultures of these microbes
are commonly used by cheesemakers.
Besides the lactic acid bacterial starter
cultures, various species of bacteria
and fungi can be added to give a
cheese very specic characteristics.
What is the white fuzzy rind
on Camembert? Spores of the
lamentous fungus Penicillium
camemberti are inoculated into milk
during the production of bloomy rind
cheeses such as Brie and Camembert.
P. candidum is an aerobe and grows
preferentially on the surface of the
cheese, where it forms a rind made
of a dense mat of hyphae (Figure 1A).
During growth, proteases are secreted
from the hyphae into the cheese. The
proteolysis of the casein destroys
the structure of the underlying curd,
slowly liquefying the cheese and giving
Camembert its oozy texture.
Cheese microbes
Julie E. Button and Rachel J. Dutton*
What is cheese? Cheese is a
fermented milk product that likely dates
back to Neolithic times. Historically
serving as a means of preserving
milk, today, a ne cheese is viewed
as a delicacy rather than a means of
survival. Millennia of cheesemaking
has led to a diversication of cheese
styles and production methods, and
more recently, to detailed technical
knowledge of the science behind the
process. Communities of microbes
catalyze the transformation of milk into
cheese and remain active participants
in the development of a cheese
throughout the aging process.
How is cheese made? Cheesemaking
occurs in three main stages. In the
rst stage, milk is transformed into
solid curds and liquid whey through
the coagulation of the milk protein
casein. The coagulation of casein is
usually accomplished through two
complementary methods, acidication
and proteolysis. Acidication occurs
when lactic acid bacteria ferment
the disaccharide lactose, to produce
lactic acid. Originally, cheesemakers
relied upon naturally occurring lactic
acid bacteria in the milk, but today,
the process is usually standardized by
the addition of domesticated bacterial
starter cultures, including strains of
Lactococcus lactis, Streptococcus
thermophilus and Lactobacillus sp. The
production of acid by these bacteria
causes casein to slowly coagulate.
This process is often assisted by the
addition of the enzyme chymosin, the
active ingredient in rennet. Rennet is
traditionally made from an extract of
the intestinal lining of a milk-fed calf,
which produces the protease chymosin
to aid in the digestion of milk. Chymosin
removes a negatively charged portion
of casein, resulting in the rapid
aggregation of casein proteins.
In the second stage of
cheesemaking, cheesemakers separate
the curds, containing the casein and
milk fat, from the whey. Depending on
the type of cheese, the curds can be
heated, salted, pressed, and eventually
formed into wheels of various shapes
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