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Interdisciplinary researchers have found a strong ally in Rita Colwell, the new director of the US National Science Foundation. Colwell flew to last week's meeting (see above) from Bangladesh, where, on a grant from the National Institutes of Health, she has been crowning the success of an interdisciplinary programme on cholera that she began 25 years ago.

Colwell: from ‘pariah to guru’. Credit: NSF

Colwell told the meeting that she had had major difficulties over 20 years getting funding. But, now that the success of her project was accepted, “I've gone from being a pariah to being a guru.”

Colwell observed that cholera epidemics always spread inland from the coast. Her hypothesis, that the bacterium Vibrio cholerae might be associated with plankton blooms, was at first scorned. But it is now the basis of a global project involving space scientists, oceanographers, molecular biologists, social scientists, physicians and high-speed computing scientists.

Colwell showed that Vibrio cholerae was associated with gravid copepods where it played a role in breaking open the egg sac by secreting chitinases. She showed that cholera epidemics were correlated with the seasonal incidence of the bacteria in the copepods.

Colwell's group has since used this insight to develop a global predictive system for cholera epidemics using remote sensing techniques. In Bangladesh last week, she was working on prevention. She tested local fabrics as potential filters and found that sari fabric, folded ten times, can remove over 90 per cent of cholera bacteria.

Colwell is now working with social scientists to implement an education programme to introduce the filters. The lesson, she says, “is the need to appreciate the complex reactions that characterize ecosystems; too complex for any one discipline”.