Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory


Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, botany, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is located in Laurel Hollow, New York, in Nassau County, on Long Island.
It is one of 68 institutions supported by the Cancer Centers Program of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and has been an NCI-designated Cancer Center since 1987. The Laboratory is one of a handful of institutions that played a central role in the development of molecular genetics and molecular biology.
It has been home to eight scientists who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. CSHL is ranked among the leading basic research institutions in molecular biology and genetics, with Thomson Reuters ranking it first in the world. CSHL was also ranked first in research output worldwide by Nature. The Laboratory is led by Bruce Stillman, a biochemist and cancer researcher.
Since its inception in 1890, the institution's campus on the North Shore of Long Island has also been a center of biology education. Current CSHL educational programs serve professional scientists, doctoral students in biology, teachers of biology in the K–12 system, and students from the elementary grades through high school. In the past 10 years, CSHL conferences & courses have drawn over 81,000 scientists and students to the main campus. For this reason, many scientists consider CSHL a "crossroads of biological science." Since 2009 CSHL has partnered with the Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou, China, to create Cold Spring Harbor Asia which annually draws some 3,000 scientists to its meetings and courses. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences, formerly the Watson School of Biological Sciences, was founded in 1999.
In 2015, CSHL announced a strategic affiliation with the nearby Northwell Health to advance cancer therapeutics research, develop a new clinical cancer research unit at Northwell Health in Lake Success, NY, to support early-phase clinical studies of new cancer therapies, and recruit and train more clinician-scientists in oncology.
CSHL hosts bioRxiv, a preprint repository for publications in the life sciences.

Research programs

Research staff in CSHL's 52 laboratories numbers over 600, including postdoctoral researchers; an additional 125 graduate students and 500 administrative and support personnel bring the total number of employees to over 1,200.
Cell biology and genomics

RNA interference and small-RNA biology; DNA replication; RNA splicing; signal transduction; genome structure; non-coding RNAs; deep sequencing; single-cell sequencing and analytics; stem cell self-renewal and differentiation; chromatin dynamics; structural biology; advanced proteomics; mass spectrometry; advanced microscopy.
Cancer research

Principal cancer types under study: breast, prostate, blood ; myelodysplastic syndrome; melanoma; liver; ovarian and cervical; lung; brain; pancreas. Research foci: drug resistance; cancer genomics; tumor microenvironment; cancer metabolism; growth control in mammalian cells; transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation.
Neuroscience

Stanley Institute for Cognitive Genomics employs deep sequencing and other tools to study genetics underlying schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. Swartz Center for the Neural Mechanisms of Cognition studies cognition in the normal brain as a baseline for understanding dysfunction in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Other research foci: autism genetics; mapping of the mammalian brain; neural correlates of decision making.
Plant biology

Plant genome sequencing; epigenetics and stem cell fate; stem cell signalling; plant-environment interactions; using genetic insights to increase yield of staple crops, e.g. maize, rice, wheat; increase fruit yield in flowering plants, e.g. tomato. Other initiatives: genetics of aquatic plants for biofuel development; lead role in building National Science Foundation's iPlant Collaborative cyberinfrastructure. Much of this work takes place on 12 acres of farmland at the nearby CSHL Uplands Farm, where expert staff raise crops and Arabidopsis plants for studies. Seven CSHL faculty members conduct research primarily in plant biology - Drs. David Jackson, Zachary Lippman, Robert Martienssen, Richard McCombie, Ullas Pedmale, Doreen Ware, and Thomas Gingeras.
Simons Center for Quantitative Biology

Genome assembly and validation; mathematical modeling and algorithm development; population genetics; applied statistical and machine learning; biomedical text-mining; computational genomics; cloud computing and Big Data.
COVID-19
Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Utah Health University, PEEL Therapeutics, and Weill Cornell Medicine worked to examine the possible function of NETs in COVID-19, gather blood samples from 33 hospitalized individuals, as well as autopsy tissue. Neutrophil Extracellular Traps are a form of protection which is utilized by the immune system against certain pathogens.

Educational programs

In addition to its research mission, CSHL has a broad educational mission. The School of Biological Sciences, established in 1998, awards the Ph.D. degree and fully funds the research program of every student. Students are challenged to obtain their doctoral degree in 4–5 years. The Undergraduate Research Program for gifted college students, and the Partners for the Future Program for advanced high school students are now hosted at the SBS.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also partners with nearby medical schools, including the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, to train students in each school's M.D./Ph.D. dual-degree program. Students from each school may choose to complete their Ph.D. thesis at CSHL.
The CSHL Meetings & Courses Program brings over 8,500 scientists from around the world to Cold Spring Harbor annually to share research results – mostly unpublished—in 60 meetings, most held biannually; and to learn new technologies in 30 to 35 professional courses, most offered annually. The Cold Spring Harbor Symposium series, held every year since 1933 with the exception of three years during the Second World War, has been a forum for researchers in genetics, genomics, neuroscience and plant biology. At the Banbury Center, about 25–30 discussion-style meetings are held yearly for a limited number of invited participants. As of 2016, a two-week course at CSHL costs between $3,700 and $4,700 per student and three-day conferences cost about $1,000 per attendee.
The DNA Learning Center, founded in 1988, was among the early pioneers in developing hands-on genetics lab experiences for middle and high school students. In 2013, 31,000 students on Long Island and New York City were taught genetics labs at the DNALC and satellite facilities in New York. Over 9,000 high school biology teachers have participated in DNALC teacher-training programs.
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press has established a program consisting of seven journals, 190 books, laboratory manuals and protocols, and online services for research preprints.

Funding

In 2015, CSHL had an operating budget of $150 million, over $100 million of which was spent on research. Half of the research budget was devoted to cancer; 25% to neuroscience; 15% to genomics and quantitative biology; and 10% to plant sciences. The sources of research funding in 2015 were: 34% Federal ; 26% auxiliary activities; 22% private philanthropy; 10% endowment; 3% corporate.

History

The institution took root as The Biological Laboratory in 1890, a summer program for the education of college and high school teachers studying zoology, botany, comparative anatomy and nature. The program began as an initiative of Eugene G. Blackford and Franklin Hooper, director of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the founding institution of The Brooklyn Museum. In 1904, the Carnegie Institution of Washington established the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor on an adjacent parcel. In 1921, the station was reorganized as the Carnegie Institution Department of Genetics.
Between 1910 and 1939, the laboratory was the base of the Eugenics Record Office of biologist Charles B. Davenport and his assistant Harry H. Laughlin, two prominent American eugenicists of the period. Davenport was director of the Carnegie Station from its inception until his retirement in 1934. In 1935 the Carnegie Institution sent a team to review the ERO's work, and as a result the ERO was ordered to stop all work. In 1939 the Institution withdrew funding for the ERO entirely, leading to its closure. The ERO's reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees were considered scientific facts in their day, but have since been discredited. Its closure came 15 years after its findings were incorporated into the National Origins Act, which severely reduced the number of immigrants to America from southern and eastern Europe who, Harry Laughlin testified, were racially inferior to the Nordic immigrants from England and Germany. Charles Davenport was also the founder and the first director of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations in 1925. Today, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory maintains the full historical records, communications and artifacts of the ERO for historical, teaching and research purposes. The documents are housed in a campus archive and can be accessed online and in a series of multimedia websites.
Carnegie Institution scientists at Cold Spring Harbor made many contributions to genetics and medicine. In 1908 George H. Shull discovered hybrid corn and the genetic principle behind it called heterosis, or "hybrid vigor." This would become the foundation of modern agricultural genetics. In 1916, Clarence C. Little was among the first scientists to demonstrate a genetic component of cancer. E. Carleton MacDowell in 1928 discovered a strain of mouse called C58 that developed spontaneous leukemia – an early mouse model of cancer. In 1933, Oscar Riddle isolated prolactin, the milk secretion hormone and Wilbur Swingle participated in the discovery of adrenocortical hormone, used to treat Addison's disease.
Milislav Demerec was named director of the Laboratory in 1941. Demerec shifted the Laboratory's research focus to the genetics of microbes, thus setting investigators on a course to study the biochemical function of the gene. During World War Two, Demerec directed efforts at Cold Spring Harbor that resulted in major increases in penicillin production.
Beginning in 1941, and annually from 1945, three of the seminal figures of molecular genetics convened summer meetings at Cold Spring Harbor of what they called the Phage Group. Salvador Luria, of Indiana University; Max Delbrück, then of Vanderbilt University; and Alfred Hershey, then of Washington University in St. Louis, sought to discover the nature of genes through study of viruses called bacteriophages that infect bacteria.
  • In 1945, Delbrück's famous Phage Course was taught for the first time, inspiring, among others, a young James D. Watson; it was repeated for many years after. CSH Symposia important in the cross-fertilization of ideas among molecular biology's pioneers were held in 1951, 1953, 1956, 1961, 1963, and 1966.
  • At the CSH Symposium in summer 1953, Watson made the first public presentation of DNA's double-helix structure.