* Correspondence: jan.korbel@embl. org; o.stegle@dkfz-heidelberg.de European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Genome Biology Unit, Heidelberg, Germany Full list of author information is available at the end of the article We will not know the long-term impact of the SARS-CoV-2 viral outbreak for some time yet, but many of us have already begun to feel the effects—not only on our daily lives but also on our work as life scientists. With partial or complete institutional shutdowns in countries worldwide, the global COVID-19 health crisis has rapidly impacted the life science landscape, including our patterns of work. Some life scientists may today feel essentially “stuck,” unable to carry out experiments because of COVID-19related working restrictions or because they need to look after children in connection with the closure of schools and kindergartens. This can be a frightening feeling, especially for young life scientists, who usually have short-term contracts and may worry about their future careers. Other scientists may have begun using the times of shutdowns and curfews to develop scientific projects further while working from home. In fact, Isaac Newton developed the essence of his groundbreaking scientific work during a pandemic when he was forced to work from home due to a plague outbreak in 1665, when the University of Cambridge sent its students home to continue their studies. For Newton, this meant Woolsthorpe Manor, the family estate about 60 miles northwest of Cambridge, where he was isolated for over a year. On his return to Cambridge in 1667, he had developed his seminal theories on classical mechanics as a student working from home [1]. Only 2 years later, he became a professor at the University of Cambridge. Of course, a lot has changed since the seventeenth century. Science today is international, globally connected, and increasingly collaborative. There are means to work from home on the computer while connecting with colleagues locally and globally using a wide range of video conferencing (VC) systems, teleconferencing platforms, or collaboration tools such as Slack [2]. For computational biologists and data scientists, collaborations can be facilitated through electronic means of communicating analysis results or co-development of computational code. The fact that nearly all communication these days is electronic also spurs new collaborations and online activities, such as virtual journal clubs held internationally, virtual scientific seminars, and ad hoc workshops and training activities on topics of common interest. Scientific conferences are increasingly held as “virtual meetings,” such as the international EMBO | EMBL Symposium “The four dimensional genome – Virtual” (normally taking place in

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COVID-19 大流行对生命科学家的影响

* 通讯：jan.korbel@embl。组织；o.stegle@dkfz-heidelberg.de 欧洲分子生物学实验室，基因组生物学单位，德国海德堡 文章末尾提供完整的作者信息列表 我们不会知道 SARS-CoV-2 的长期影响病毒爆发已经有一段时间了，但我们中的许多人已经开始感受到影响——不仅对我们的日常生活，而且对我们作为生命科学家的工作。随着世界各国部分或全部机构关闭，全球 COVID-19 健康危机迅速影响了生命科学领域，包括我们的工作模式。一些生命科学家今天可能会感到本质上“陷入困境，” 由于与 COVID-19 相关的工作限制或因学校和幼儿园关闭而需要照顾儿童而无法进行实验。这可能是一种令人恐惧的感觉，特别是对于年轻的生命科学家来说，他们通常签订短期合同并可能担心自己未来的职业生涯。其他科学家可能已经开始利用停工和宵禁的时间在家工作时进一步开发科学项目。事实上，艾萨克·牛顿 (Isaac Newton) 在大流行期间发展了他开创性科学工作的精髓，当时他因 1665 年瘟疫爆发而被迫在家工作，当时剑桥大学将学生送回家继续学习。对于牛顿来说，这意味着位于剑桥西北约 60 英里的家族庄园伍尔索普庄园，在那里他被隔离了一年多。1667 年他回到剑桥后，作为一名在家工作的学生，他发展了经典力学的开创性理论[1]。仅仅两年后，他就成为了剑桥大学的教授。当然，自 17 世纪以来发生了很多变化。当今的科学是国际化的、全球联系的，并且日益协作。有多种方法可以在家中在计算机上工作，同时使用各种视频会议 (VC) 系统、电话会议平台或 Slack [2] 等协作工具与本地和全球的同事联系。对于计算生物学家和数据科学家来说，可以通过电子方式交流分析结果或共同开发计算代码来促进合作。如今几乎所有的交流都是电子化的，这一事实也刺激了新的合作和在线活动，例如在国际上举办的虚拟期刊俱乐部、虚拟科学研讨会以及关于共同感兴趣主题的特别研讨会和培训活动。科学会议越来越多地以“虚拟会议”的形式举行，例如国际 EMBO | EMBL 研讨会“四维基因组——虚拟”（通常发生在