In the Spotlight—Postdoc

Agneesh Barua was a recipient of the SMBE Graduate Student Excellence Award by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution and the Peter Gruss Doctoral Dissertation Excellence Award by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. He received an honorable mention for the Birnstiel Award of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (Austria). Agneesh was also awarded an HFSP Long-Term Fellowship by the Human Frontier Science Program.

Agnees Barua is the first author of the PNAS paper “An ancient, conserved gene regulatory network led to the rise of oral venom systems” (2021, co-authored with Alexander Mikheyev).

Personal website: https://agneeshbarua.github.io/agneesh_website

Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1AcPd8kAAAAJ

With whom and where did you study?

I did my PhD at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) under the supervision of Professor Alexander Mikheyev. The main focus of my PhD was unraveling the evolution genetics of snake venoms.

What got you interested in Biology? When did you know EvoDevo was for you?

For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by animals and their diversity. The way evolutionary processes, acting on species across timescales, interact with developmental processes within an organism throughout its lifetime to produce the vast array of phenotypic diversity is truly captivating. There is a certain elegance and beauty to this aspect of nature that I find deeply inspiring. During my PhD, I honed my quantitative and computational skills, but it was a talk by Professor Vincent Laudet on the evo-devo of clownfish, which I attended near the end of my PhD, that sparked my curiosity, leading to the decision to study teleost fish and focus on evo-devo.

What scientific challenges and opportunities does EvoDevo provide that help you design research projects that go beyond your graduate research?

My graduate research was primarily theoretical, with a substantial bioinformatics component. I analysed genomic data to uncover patterns of molecular evolution and made predictions about the roles genes and biological processes might play in shaping phenotypic traits. While many of my predictions about venom evolution have been confirmed in multiple species of venomous animals, achieving true mechanistic validation has been challenging. This difficulty largely stems from the nature of the questions I posed and the limited means available for testing them at a mechanistic level. However, an evo-devo framework allows me to formulate questions that can lead to testable predictions. For example, do genes that regulate metamorphosis in teleosts also influence trait variation between species?

What is the biggest challenge you face as a postdoc? What issues do feel the discipline needs to address for junior researchers?

As someone aspiring to become a PI, I find the greatest challenge lies in striking the right balance between publishing high-impact research, demonstrating a sufficient degree of independence, and developing novel research directions. In today's academic environment, high-impact papers are often the result of collaborations between multidisciplinary teams, taking several years to complete, and frequently involving multiple co-first authors. On the other hand, studies that showcase independence, often struggle to produce the kind of groundbreaking insights that high-impact journals deem ‘suitable’ for publication. Lastly, pursuing novel research carries inherent risks, with uncertain outcomes.

In academia, where pretty much everyone is overworked, summary metrics like impact factor and h-index are frequently relied upon to make critical hiring decisions. Although many academics agree that these metrics are imperfect, progress toward more holistic evaluation methods remains slow. I feel it is crucial to give academics more time to engage with their research and to assess applications more comprehensively, with an emphasis on potential contributions to knowledge and reproducibility.