Mónica Bettencourt-Dias: "We will no longer just read genomes: we will begin to write them"

It's barely been three months since she arrived in Barcelona and Mónica Bettencourt-Dias (Lisbon, 1972) is already fumbling with Catalan. She has a private tutor and has enrolled her daughters in a summer camp to immerse them in the language. All this shows the intentions of this cellular biologist, who confesses herself to be in love with the city and its culture, and who has just taken over as director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. She is the first woman to head this flagship of biomedical research in Europe, and will lead nearly 500 scientists from 47 different nationalities.

Bettencourt, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from University College London, arrives in Catalonia after having directed the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Lisbon and having chaired EU-Life, an alliance of centers of excellence in European biomedical research. This scientist argues that artificial intelligence and generative biology will allow us to move from understanding life to beginning to design it, but warns that this revolution will only be useful if critical thinking, ethical values, and curiosity-driven research are preserved.

In the spring we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the publication of the human genome. During this time, we have learned to read them. What will be the next step?

— We will begin to write them. It is no longer just about understanding the genome and what it means, but about being able to predict what it will do and even begin to design the future. And we will be able to do this because we have the tools thanks to artificial intelligence and new technologies.

Is it what is called generative biology?

— Exactly. For many years we have tried to understand life. Now we can start to use this knowledge to build new biology. At the CRG, there are already researchers designing artificial proteins and others modifying cells so they can administer drugs. We are trying to use everything we have learned in biology and the tools and technologies we have developed to create new solutions, always within very clear ethical limits. We want to move towards the concept of one health or one health, learn from biodiversity, because nature has solved many problems during millions of years of evolution. Now AI allows us to study many more genomes and understand these solutions to apply them to new challenges, both in medicine and in conservation, for example.

Is biodiversity taking a central role in biomedical research?

— When you understand the fundamental principles of life, this knowledge serves to study both a human disease and an ecosystem. Everything is connected. That is why we promote initiatives such as the Biodiversity Cell Atlas or Piri Sentinel, in the Pyrenees, where we study how biodiversity evolves and identify species that can act as sentinels of environmental changes. We have also established a very important collaboration with Andorra, which is an extraordinary natural laboratory because it is a small territory where many aspects can be monitored. With the Andorran government, we will work together on mountain biodiversity. It is the first time that a research center has made a collaboration like this with another country.

It is not a line that is usually associated with the CRG.

— In reality, the CRG was already doing many of these things. What is changing is the narrative. We continue trying to understand the fundamental mechanisms of life, but this knowledge is also useful for understanding ecosystems. If we have the right partners, applications can go in many directions.

Will this be the new strategy of the center?

— The most important thing continues to be recruiting the best talent to do excellent science. And this happens because they can pursue their dreams and ideas with complete freedom, because it is only in this way that innovative contributions emerge. But we have also defined strategic lines that I like to explain with a very Catalan metaphor: human towers (castells), because they show how, by working together, we can build something much greater than any individual could do. And we have defined three missions for this tower we want to build.

Who are they?

— The first is dedicated to artificial intelligence and generative biology. It is about taking advantage of these new tools to accelerate research and build new biological tools that can improve life in an ethical way. The second revolves around human health. We have extraordinary technologies, but the great challenge is to integrate all the information we obtain from a patient, from genomic data to imaging tests, proteomics, clinical history. This data integration – multiomics – is fundamental to moving towards truly personalized precision medicine, and we are already making progress in this regard in collaboration with hospitals and other research centers. And we have already spoken about the third mission: biodiversity to advance towards health. When you understand the genomes of many species, you can also better predict the biological processes that affect human health. In the end, people's health, that of ecosystems, and that of the planet are part of the same system.

Aging is also becoming a priority.

— Healthy aging is one of the great challenges we face as a society. For this reason, several CRG groups are already working on it from different perspectives, from understanding the fundamentals of aging by searching for mathematical patterns to knowing how the passage of time impacts oocytes. Furthermore, we are developing a joint program with other institutions within an international consortium to advance precision medicine applied to aging.

Will artificial intelligence be the great accelerator of all this research?

— Of course, but it also forces us to reflect a lot on how we want to use it. Recently, I participated in a meeting of CRG doctoral students and they had organized a very interesting debate: what would happen if your supervisor stopped arguing with you and argued directly with the AI? And of the ideas that arose from it, one seemed particularly relevant to me: learning takes time.

That is precisely what AI saves you.

— But you need time to read an article, to be able to not understand part of it, to question what you are reading, to make mistakes and to try again. When AI digests that article for you and simply tells you what it explains and what it concludes, the first thing that happens is that you stop being critical –because that article might be wrong–, but, above all, you lose the necessary time to learn, to think and to develop critical thinking. And that worries me a lot.

Therefore, the question is not whether we use AI, but how we use it.

— Exactly, and no one has this answer yet. At CRG we are creating an AI task force, a team to reflect on all the implications of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, we are leading a European initiative that brings together funding agencies, research institutions, and other actors to debate how this tool should be used in research, because we believe we must build this answer together. Perhaps we will make some mistakes in our decisions, but we must think together about the path we want to follow.

The technological revolution also forces us to rethink ethical boundaries.

— It is a very important topic for the CRG, and for this reason we already have a program dedicated to thinking about the impact of research on society and we encourage researchers to reflect on the consequences of what they do, not only the positive ones, but also those that can generate questions. We are now transforming this work into what we call a policy lab, a space for reflection on the social, ethical and regulatory implications of new technologies. It is not just about communicating research better, but also about asking ourselves what we can do and what we should not do. AI is part of this debate, but so are many other technologies.

Can Europe play a differential role in this reflection?

— I think so. We are living in an extraordinary moment. When the CRG was inaugurated, no one could have imagined that in twenty years we would get this far. The speed at which research is advancing is fascinating. But this potential also carries enormous responsibility, and as scientists we have a duty to society. In this regard, I believe that Europe has very solid values in this area that we must preserve.

Can Catalonia play in the world's top research division?

— Catalonia is in a very good position. If it had a little more research funding, it would undoubtedly be the place to be. It has excellent institutions, and continues to attract new ones; it is creating an extraordinary critical mass with initiatives like the Fish Market,, and this in turn attracts more companies and businesses. Furthermore, it is a very attractive place to attract international talent: people want to come and stay there. The challenge is how to retain this talent, because we have the resources to attract researchers, but then many depend on obtaining competitive grants, such as those from the ERC. If we strengthened structural funding a little more, it would be much easier to consolidate this ecosystem and make it grow.

Defend scientific dissemination. In an era of disinformation, what role should it play?

— Even more importantly! But we must change the way we understand it. We need to know which strategies work, which generate trust, and which allow us to establish a real dialogue with society. For this, research must be done on scientific communication, working with social science researchers to understand what works and what doesn't. And we also need to create spaces for society to tell us what it thinks, what worries it. Communication cannot be one-way only.

As a researcher, what is the big question you would still like to answer?

— I am interested in understanding how the environment modifies cell structures and how these structures allow the cell to interact with its environment. It is a fundamental question. If we better understand this relationship, we will be able to understand processes such as aging, cancer, or viral infections.

In a time when ever-faster results are demanded, you continue to champion curiosity-driven research. Why?

— Because it is the one that ends up generating the most disruptive innovations. If a scientific ecosystem stops giving space to this type of research, sooner or later it will also stop innovating. Companies need to have institutions close by that conduct fundamental research. They can develop the products, but great ideas are often born from researchers who were simply trying to answer a question that no one knew if it would have any application.

Today, however, there is a lot of pressure for science to have an immediate impact.

— Yes, and it's understandable. Society wants answers. But we must remember where great scientific revolutions come from. Let's think about GLP-1 agonists [drugs like Ozempic]. It all began because a researcher was studying the saliva of the Gila monster, a lizard with very slow digestion. It was curiosity-driven research. No one was looking for a treatment for obesity. Years later, that knowledge has led to a family of medications that are changing the lives of millions of people. This is the best argument for fundamental research, as we don't know where the next great discovery will come from. Science needs excellence, but it also needs imagination. That's why we must continue asking questions that, apparently, have no immediate application.