Thomas (Tom) Cech is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a former President of HHMI (2000-2009). Dr. Cech's work has been recognized by the Heineken Prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1988), the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1988), the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1989), and the National Medal of Science (1995). In 1987 he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
He sent the following comment about the change in policy at HHMI regarding the immediate release of structural data upon publication:
I appreciate your project, but my memory is hazy regarding the timeline of my own contributions (if any!) to the important requirement of depositing x-ray crystallography data on the PDB.
We began doing RNA crystallography in 1991, when Jennifer Doudna joined my lab as a postdoc, and began publishing structures in 1996. I became president of HHMI in January 2000, and I frankly don’t recall if Alex Wlodawer’s credit to me is deserved or if the HHMI policy was already in place.
I do recall that there was not unanimity about the policy – some wanted to keep their data secret for as long as possible, to thwart competition or perhaps to develop small-molecule inhibitors of an enzyme. Others shared my commitment to open science – in short, you aren’t required to publish your structure, but once you publish it you must make all data available. This allows the community to build on your work (and perhaps to falsify it!) and it moves science forward. The same principle of sharing applies to cell lines, transgenic mice, and computer code.