Over the long term, life sciences will provide the basis for substantial numbers of improved jobs and economic progress. Biotechnology provides economic value over the shorter term and is more immediately obvious to people and governments. Should we be developing programs that collectively and efficiently achieve both deep science and efficient technological applications? This is not the same as translational research, as it is more about deep research and about applying resulting technologies to appropriate problems.
We recently wrote a concept article to explore how biomimetic materials have been employed by some researchers for various technologies (circuitry, optics, photonics, photovoltaics and magnetic data storage http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.201300721/abstract). We chose this topic as we felt that many researchers in the biotemplated materials and biomineralisation fields develop and explore a variety of technologically relevant and interesting materials. However, few currently demonstrate that their biomimetic material can be incorporated into a device and compare that performance to the materials in current industrial synthetic analogues. I think that there is a need for more support in taking such bioinspired materials and helping researchers to form collaborations that allow them to test their biomaterial in such situations. This would allow the focus of the research to be towards development of such materials for optimisation within devices, which would surely help bring technology based on biotemplated devices much closer to reality.
Application of biotechnology in development of aquaculture is a good example. Aquaculture is an age old practice and its yield can be increased many times by applying the concepts of biotechnology. India and many other maritime countries are giving lots of funds to biotechnology and molecular biology research aimed towards development of aquaculture. It has created job opportunities and research opportunities for many.
"Should we be developing programs that collectively and efficiently achieve both deep science and efficient technological applications?" Engineering is about competently applying known science. Basic research is fundamentally disparate from engineering because it tries to expand what is known (and is therefore only borderline competent.) So I don't know why we (the public) should be concerned with stable funding for engineering -- something that is ultimately market (profit) driven -- while we (the basic research community) pursue deep science. I can imagine scenarios where the public stands as beneficiaries of the technologies they've helped to commercialize, but it's unclear how this would play out in terms of market effects -- the basic uncertainty is how economic pressures would respond to this. As long as there is no political will for a departure from 'subsidized costs, privatized profits' I don't think this sort of thing would be viable. An alternative angle is that there IS a way to fundamentally wed life sciences and biotechnology to promote generous and stable funding for both, it's called "private industry" and it puts basic research, intellectual property, applied research, and commercialization under the same roof.
I actually went on a huge rant about this on my blog last week, so I'll post that link: http://dianacrowscience.com/basic-research/
Basically, I think that they are already married; after all, basic research fuels applied research and leads to new innovations. To me, it seems like the problem is more a matter of policy makers and funding committees not understanding the connections between different types of research and how they support each other.
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