WORLD VIEW11 November 2026Technology is making biological studies more powerful than ever. But people are the real force behind discovery.ByEdith Heard0Edith HeardEdith Heard is the chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute, London.View author publicationsSearch author on: PubMed Google ScholarView saved researchAs the Francis Crick Institute in London celebrates its tenth anniversary and I look back on my first year as chief executive, I find myself reflecting on both how much has been achieved and how profoundly life science is changing.As an epigeneticist, I can safely say that history and context matter. When I began my scientific career in the 1980s, experiments were painstaking, time-consuming, expensive and repetitive. Generating a knockout mouse or sequencing a gene could take weeks or months, and required resources that were available at few institutions.The Selfish Gene, 50 years on — it’s time for an updateBiology has since entered an extraordinary era. It is increasingly multidisciplinary, and researchers have an unprecedented range of technologies at their disposal, from single-cell and spatial biology techniques to advanced imaging, genome editing, tissue engineering and computational approaches.Artificial intelligence is also transforming science. Its ability to bring together complex data sets offers fresh ways to connect the study of biology across scales, from molecules and cells to individual organisms and populations. It is also enabling the democratization of discovery and knowledge. Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold system, for example, has made predictions of millions of protein structures available to researchers worldwide.Biologists are poised to at last understand the complexity of life: the influence of the environment, ageing and sex, alongside genetics, on the differences between us. Among the questions to which answers are within reach are how the genetic code gives rise to a living organism; how the control and expression of genes varies during development; how tissues communicate and bodily functions depend on one another; and why diseases develop differently in different people and treatments work for some but not others.Could measuring immune health reshape medical care?Reductionism has served biology well, giving us a deep mechanistic understanding of life, health and disease. But many features of living systems cannot be predicted from their individual parts alone. They emerge from interactions between components and depend on the context in which those interactions occur.Science needs both reductionist and holistic approaches: connecting molecular mechanisms and signalling pathways with inter-organ communication and physiology, while understanding how these systems respond and adapt to environmental challenges. And performing such studies requires research environments that allow scientists to think and work across conventional boundaries.As director of the Crick, I have seen the incredible value of an environment that is organized around people and scientific questions rather than institutional divisions. Shared infrastructure and specialist teams enable research to cross disciplines and deploy technologies in new ways. Connections between fundamental research, clinical science and industry also help discoveries to move towards real-world applications, swiftly and efficiently.But even the most sophisticated technologies and research environments are only as powerful as the scientists using them. Creating an environment in which people from diverse backgrounds and with different life experiences are encouraged to perform bold, rigorous science and harness the power of AI will be key to future discoveries. Patterns identified by AI need to be scrutinized by people and validated through experiment.Nature 659, 563 (2026)doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03669-wCompeting InterestsE.H. is director-general of EMBL — the European intergovernmental research organization for molecular biology.SubjectsGeneticsMachine learningResearch managementLatest on:GeneticsMachine learningResearch managementJobs Open-Rank Faculty Position in Basic Biomedical ResearchWashU Medicine’s Dept of Anesthesiology seeks applicants for a tenure-track or tenured faculty position in the Division of Basic Research.Saint Louis, MissouriWashU Medicine - AnesthesiologyGlobal Recruitment of Outstanding Young TalentsWe are seeking exceptional candidates who qualify for the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (Overseas)1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen 518055 P. R. ChinaShenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences（CAS)Group Leader – Genome Editing and Cellular ImmunotherapyVU LSC EMBL Partnership Institute for Genome Editing Technologies seeks principal investigator in Genome Editing and Cellular ImmunotherapyVilnius (LT)Vilnius University Life Sciences CenterFaculty Vacancy Announcement of Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua UniversityFull-time Tenure-Track Professor in Public Health Security/Big Data in Health/Big Health/Global Health and GovernanceTsinghua University 30 Shuangqing Road, Haidian District Beijing 100084 P.R. ChinaVanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua UniversityPostdoc and FacultyThe open positions include postdoctoral research associate, assistant professor, associate professor, full professor and center directors.Hangzhou, Zhejiang (CN)Zhejiang Chinese Medical University - Institute of Precision Medicine