Fällt etwas auf an folgendem Artikelkopf (am besten Draufklicken zum Vergrößern)?
Richtig, die ersten sechs Autoren sind „Independent Researchers“ ohne irgendwelche Institutsanbindung. Privatleute also. Und die bekommen ein begutachtetes Paper in PLoS ONE?
Allerdings. Seniorautor Andy Grierson vom Insitute for Translational Neuroscience der Universität Sheffield, erklärt dazu:
Citizen Scientists are not required to have a scientific background or training, but instead they possess a passion for the subject and are increasingly being empowered by the scientific community to get involved in research.
Konkret ging es in Griersons Projekt vor allem darum, die Besiedelungsgeschichte Europas anhand der Verteilung männlicher Y-Chromosomvarianten nachzuzeichnen. Und das Konzept, begeisterte Amateure konkret darin einzubinden, funktionierte offenbar bestens. Grierson:
The team has addressed this problem by downloading human genome data obtained by the 1000 Genomes Project from the Sanger Centre in Cambridge. Then, working on their home computers, they managed to extract 200 novel genetic variants from Y chromosomes of the most numerous group of western European men.
By determining the patterns of these markers in each of the 1000 Genomes Project samples, the team was able to draw up a new family tree for the majority of men in Western Europe.
Eine Sache, die nach Grierson gerade bei der Analyse der riesigen und öffentlich zugänglichen Mengen an Sequenzdaten durchaus Schule machen könnte:
This community-led approach to genetic research could easily be adopted by other research areas. In particular, the 1000 Genomes Project has made the whole genome sequence of more than 2,000 individuals freely available for research purposes. These sequences potentially contain new information that will give important insight in diverse disciplines such as clinical medicine and evolutionary biology.
One problem is that the amount of data analysis involved is huge, so working in partnership with citizen scientists allows us to move forward far more rapidly. There are thousands of science graduates, who for one reason or another have pursued non-scientific careers. Getting involved in citizen science projects is one way that these people can re-engage with research. Likewise many people with careers in IT and computing already have the sorts of skills required for analysing whole genome sequences in projects like ours.“
Aha. Es geht also nicht wirklich um Jedermann und Jederfrau — sondern vor allem um wissenschaftlich ausgebildete Leute, die jetzt aus irgendwelchen Gründen forschungsfern arbeiten.
Was durchaus erfolgsversprechend sein könnte, denn davon gibt es ja wahrlich genug.
Interessant sind aber auch folgende Sätze aus dem Original-Paper, die schön illustrieren, wie so ein „Bürgerprojekt“ konkret abläuft:
The main mode of communication was through the DNAForums website (DNA-Forums, A Genetic Genealogy Community, http://dna-forums.org). It was here that general information on data mining techniques and the discovery of new variants was shared and discussed amongst team members.
[…]
A master list of new variants was kept in a centralized spreadsheet stored in Google Docs (https://docs.google.com), a freely available cloud storage service. This made uploading, storing and organising the data easier to manage and readily available to any citizen scientist with access to the Internet.
[…]
The progress we have made towards resolving the L11 phylogeny has been significant considering that none of the authors of this manuscript have ever met, nor spoken on the phone. Open source data, open source tools, and open forums enable research collaborations to blossom. In fact, other citizen scientists are currently using similar approaches to find groundbreaking SNPs in other branches of the Y chromosome haplogroup tree.
[…]
Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report.
Irgendwie beschleicht einen schon das Gefühl, dass man demnächst womöglich noch mehr solcher „Citizen Science“-Projekte begegnen wird.
Schlagworte: Amateure, Citizen Science, Laien, Paper, PLoS ONE, Sequenzdaten, Y-Chromosom
