By: Susan Graham, Randy Schekman

When UC Berkeley biochemist Jamie Cate approached funding agencies with his idea to help researchers design antibiotics to combat drug-resistant bacteria, they said it couldn't be done. But they took a gamble on Cate, a young professor, and it paid off. Today, using intense X-ray beams, Cate produces the sharpest images yet of key proteins targeted by antibiotics, paving the way for more effective bacteria killers.

In the U.S. science and technology arena, such projects are known as high-risk, high-reward research, and they are funded once in a blue moon. Thankfully, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences just published a report urging government, universities and private foundations to reverse this trend and target their dollars at young scholars' more revolutionary proposals.

This conclusion is long overdue.

For more than half a century, the United States has led the world in science and technology research, thanks in large part to government funding of research universities. But in the last decade, funding choices have become increasingly conservative, with decision-makers settling for low-key research at the expense of speculative but worthwhile returns.

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