biology

#IAmScience Madison Green

December 13, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: biology

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

It’s hard for a sixth-grader to nail down exactly what she wants to do for the rest of her life, but that’s when the process started for Madison Green. After all, it isn’t the easiest of decisions.

With a wide range of possibilities, it can be hard for anyone to be truly sure of a decision that will shape the rest of their life.

For Green, a junior biology and public health dual major, her path shifted toward science when she joined Science Olympiad, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of K-12 science education.

Once a week, every week for seven years, Green met after school with her friends and mentors to learn and prepare for competitions. The organization gave her the opportunity to try out different areas of science such as chemistry, biology and physics. With events that range from building Rube Goldberg-like devices to others focused on microbes or designing experiments, the events and preparation run the gambit of science, medicine and engineering. Through the academic seasons, Green built on what she learned previously, expanded her knowledge of science and fell in love with research.

“Science Olympiad really helped me focus more on biology and it also helped me become an independent learner,” Green said. “For all the events at the national level, we really had to take charge and decide what we needed to learn and where we needed to strengthen our knowledge.”

After all of her years competing in Science Olympiad, Green knew she wanted to pursue science, but the question now was in what capacity.

Early on in her undergraduate career Green started looking for opportunities in research to supplement what she was learning in class. She remembers being drawn to Cheryl Rosenfeld’s lab in the Bond Life Sciences Center because of the opportunity to research behavior in mice models.

“I became very interested in public health in high school,” Green said. “When I got to college, I began exploring different careers in the health care field and public health really stuck out to me. I realized I wanted to work more one-on-one with patients.”

Being able to give back and help her community was a top factor in Green’s decision to add public health as a second major. She saw the opportunity to connect her interest in biology and public health through her research in Rosenfeld’s lab. Overall, public health’s ability to assess problems on a population level drew Green in.

“We’re looking at the maternal-fetal effects of oxycodone on mother mice. My research partner is looking more at behavior and I’m looking at the placenta,” Green said. “It’s definitely an interesting bridge for myself between my biology major and my public health major. As a public health major, we’ve looked into the opioid crisis and the effect’s it’s having across the nation and here in Missouri.”

In order to solidify her decision, Green also joined Beta Beta Beta, the biology honor society, and pre-med society. In both groups, Green has found support and guidance from her fellow peers and mentors. Ultimately, her involvement in pre-med society is what guided her toward applying to medical school post-graduation.

But now, the big decision lies in what branch of medicine to pursue.

“I’m hoping to figure that out when I get to medical school, but right now, I’m really focused on emergency medicine as a strong contender,” Green said. “I think there is a great opportunity to impact public health whether it be because of the opioid crisis or people whose symptoms have worsened over time because they didn’t have access to a family health practitioner.”

Green’s life has been composed of carefully calculated steps that will one day launch her into her career. From Science Olympiad, to Rosenfeld’s lab, science societies and one day medical school, Green wants to ensure she’s on the right track.

#IAmScience Mannie Liscum

December 6, 2019 By Danielle Pycior in #IAmScience Tags: biology

For Mannie Liscum, thinking is a privilege, and his job gives him the chance to be fascinated by human’s capacity to conceptualize and learn new things.

“It’s my goal to use as much of the stuff between my ears as I can while I’m here,” said the Bond LSC primary investigator. “And that’s what drives a lot of people into science.”

Along with that internal tick to learn, he’s inspired by the scientific pursuit to better understand the world. He said it’s easy to see things and from one mindset, but in reality, it’s always more complicated, and his young experiences taught him that.

“As you learn more and mature more, in terms of knowledge, you become more and more open all the time and you become less and less closed off and afraid of change and things that you aren’t familiar with,” he said.

Travel is an important part of advancing this understanding, particularly through trips that make him think more deeply about important topics.

A few years ago, he went to a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, and took the opportunity to travel to Moscow and Smolensk, along with Auschwitz. Another trip that deeply affected him was a civil rights tour throughout the southern U.S. states.

“I thought I was pretty open-mind, but I realized I still had a lot to learn and how much courage and strength minority populations in this country have and have had,” he said. “It’s an experience everyone should have. As a non-Jew, non-persecuted person, I can only understand those situations so much until I stand on those grounds.”

Growing up on a farm in upstate New York, he always thought the vet that came to look at the cows had the coolest job. He started his undergrad at State University of New York at Plattsburgh looking into veterinary medicine, but his school didn’t have it, so he tackled pre-med. After pushing through various science courses, he finally found his passion during one particular semester while he and 14 other students lived on-site at a research institute learning anything “from microscopy to animal cell culture, plant tissue culture, molecular biology, immunology to virology.”

He said they lived and breathed science during that semester, and he absolutely loved it. This led him down a path of plant biology research. Though he didn’t get the best grades or the best GRE score, he was determined to forge his own path. He saw rejections and received unkind words, but it taught him that students are human beings who deserve respect, even if they aren’t right for a certain program.

“I love being able to couple an idea with evidence to then drive forward a new idea,” he said.

Liscum eventually ended up at Ohio State University for his graduate degree after a professor there advocated for him to be in the program.

“I finished my Ph.D. in four years and I published eight publications when I was a graduate student,” he said. “So, I had a successful graduate career. It was different than exams and classes, and for me, it was an experience I can thrive in, whereas the classroom experience was not my strength, which again, gives me a different perspective when I’m trying to teach.”

After his graduate degree, he went onto his postdoctoral position at Stanford, and before he had finished that program received a job offer at MU. That was 24 years ago, and since that time, he said he’s had the privilege of working with phenomenal students and colleagues and has grown to love Columbia.

His thirst for knowledge doesn’t only exist in the scientific framework. Liscum is interested in a variety of topics and seeks knowledge and perspective through literature. This year, he’s already read 44 books in pursuit of his goal of 52, one book a week. He said he still struggles with English, as he did growing up, but the more he pushes through the better he gets at it. That’s a philosophy he’s often lived by.

Amid his search for knowledge, Liscum enjoys politics, history, cooking, films, traveling and abnormal art.

Every October for the last 15 years, Mannie Liscum spends hours each night carving pumpkins. These aren’t your regular small, happy face pumpkins though. He carves an astonishingly intricate pumpkin each day of the month. What began as portraits of his kids in pumpkin form, turned into a life-long, stress-relieving hobby.

In the past quarter-century, he’s seen Columbia grow by 25,000 people, bring in new restaurants and events, and expand its eclectic vibe. He also loves its position in the world, seeing it as a great location to travel across the country and globe. His kids are in Colorado and Georgia, which allows him to drive to visit them both.

At the end of the day, Liscum is driven by connection – to people, to his community, to his research and his opportunity to keep on learning.

“The more we engage, the better we become as a species,” he said. “That’s how I see life.”

#IAmScience Rachel Martin

November 22, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: biology

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Rachel Martin always faced challenges head-on.

As a budding freshman who began her college career in the School of Journalism, she switched to biological sciences, tackled a double major in music, joined two research labs and kept up with clubs throughout her undergraduate career. Through it all, she has maintained an unwavering ambitious spirit.

Now in her final year, Martin has wrapped up her music degree and enjoys a more relaxed course load than she’s used to. From freshman to junior year, she often took over 18 credit hours at a time and balanced countless hours of studio practice, lessons, ensemble rehearsals, music and aural theory courses, science course labs and the academic rigor of both her degrees.

“My busy scheduled has definitely helped me with my time management skills,” Martin said. “I feel like a time management wizard now. It’s definitely prepared me for eventually going to medical school.”

While Martin is very sure of her future career path, she hasn’t always been this certain.

“When I was in high school, I was a part of my school’s newspaper and I’ve always been good at writing, so I thought I wanted to go into journalism,” Martin said. “I did the Missouri Urban Journalism Workshop and I loved it, but I remember thinking ‘wow, these other students are a lot more gung-ho about it than I am’.”

After she realized the journalism route wasn’t for her, she took some time to critically think about her career options. She recalls being inspired by her mom, who is a nurse, and at that point, decided she wanted to go to medical school.

From there, she looked into research labs her sophomore year and landed in Bing Zhang’s lab and studied Drosophila or small fruit flies. Then she found an opportunity in Cheryl Rosenfeld’s lab which allowed her to study the fetal effects of oxycodone.

“I’ve been helping out with Dr. Rosenfeld’s BPA studies on California mice as well as looking at the maternal-fetal effects of oxycodone on a different strain (CF-1),” Martin said. “[My research partner] is doing placental collections and I’ll be doing the behavioral analysis of the litters. Oxycodone is a relatively new drug that is being prescribed as a painkiller, however, people have been abusing it. There isn’t a whole of research being done into its effects as a drug of abuse.”

In addition to her scientific studies, Martin has been involved in the University Philharmonic Orchestra, the University Wind Ensemble, the Missouri Symphony Orchestra and Sigma Alpha Iota, a music fraternity.

“For the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, we do gigs around the community. Tomorrow we’re doing one for all the third graders in Columbia,” said Martin. “It’s like a get to know music and instruments. They learn about the piece in their music class and then they come hear it live.”

Martin intends to apply to medical school, but in the meantime, she will take a gap year and look into EMT or patient care technician jobs at the hospital. She plans to apply to the University of Missouri School of Medicine as her top choice, but she will also look at other places in the Midwest such as UMKC and a handful in Chicago.

Although she has dreams of becoming a pediatric or obstetrics and gynecology doctor, she plans on carrying music throughout her life.

“I’ve played French horn since middle, so it’s been almost 10 years since I started and it’s something that is stress-relieving to me,” Martin said. “It’s a totally different outlet from the science side and it has helped me with my science and research. Being in an orchestra, you have to be a team player and you have to be able to communicate with your team and step up to the plate and do the work.”

#IAmScience K’Imani Davis

July 20, 2018 By Erica Overfelt in #IAmScience Tags: Anand Chandrasekhar, biology, mizzou, research

By Erica Overfelt | Bond LSC

From hate to passion.

One class changed senior K’Imani Davis’s mind, who is now going into her senior year working in the Anand Chandrasekhar lab at Bond LSC.

“I used to actually hate science, and when I say hate, I hated it,” Davis said. “Senior year of high school I took AP Bio, I loved it. I don’t know what happened, but I started to try and I liked the subject.”

After Davis’s change of heart, she decided to start out at MU as a biology major, and she is now going the pre-med route.

Just like Davis ended up in science, she ended up at MU by chance.

“I wasn’t going to come here at first,” Davis said. “I never visited and never knew someone here. I was so indecisive about my college decisions so I put all my options in a hat and just drew, I drew Mizzou so I just came here.”

Davis came to MU knowing nothing about the campus, programs or any students. And then she stumbled across an opportunity that changed her college experience for her.

“I actually got involved by accident,” Davis said. “I had a class in this building and across from my class was the undergraduate research office. I decided I wanted to do research because it was science out of the classroom.”

From freshman year to now, Davis has found a home away from home in her lab.

“I think of my lab as a family,” Davis said. “We always have something to do all together every semester. It’s very family oriented, it’s very close and tight knit. My boss sometimes even acts like my father.”

Davis didn’t just find a family at Bond LSC, she found her passion. The lab is studying neuronal migration in zebra fish. This study looks at how neurons move into place as the brain and nervous system develops with the hope of learning how the process works and using that information to understand neuro-degenerative disease. In her freshman year when Davis was an intern in the lab, she fed the fish and cleaned the tanks. Now, she analyzes fish behaviors and compares swim patterns between wild and mutated zebra fish.

“By analyzing their behavior, we are able to see if there are neuronal migration patterns, and we see what defects leads to different behaviors,” Davis said.

Davis’s goal for this upcoming year is to have a poster of her research to display to others. Her experience at MU has brought her a family, a passion and no longer a hatred for science.

“I think everything happens for a reason,” Davis said.

#IAmScience Rohit Rao

February 2, 2018 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biology, virology

By Allison Scott | Bond LSC

“#IAmScience because I get to apply knowledge from the classroom to my research.”

There are a number of ways to get involved in research, but tennis probably doesn’t come to mind. Rohit Rao was practicing his serve alongside Kamal Singh in 2015 when the two began talking about science.

The junior biology and psychology double major expressed his interest in working in research, and Singh offered for him to join Stefan Sarafianos’ lab in the Bond Life Sciences Center.

“I got my first taste of research in high school and found a passion I didn’t know I had,” Rao said. “I wanted to continue to grow as a researcher when I went to college, and meeting Kamal was a pretty clear path to doing that.”

Rao understands the idea that research builds upon itself, which is why learning the basics before coming to Mizzou proved helpful.

“In high school, I did civil engineering research testing water quality from the Missouri River,” Rao said. “It was clearly something I could see myself doing for many years.”

The Columbia native is following in his family’s footsteps by pursuing science.

“My family is full of doctors and scientists, so having that has given me a greater understanding of what goes on,” Rao said. “I was never pushed into it, though, because it’s something I really want to do.”

After graduating next year, Rao plans on attending medical school and applying the knowledge he’s gained from all of his experiences.

“There are things I learn from the lab and then it’s taught in class, and there are things I learn in class that are helpful in lab,” Rao said. “There’s a big class-lab application interaction.”

Those applications have proved helpful for Rao while working with Singh. He has grown as both a scientist and a researcher since that conversation on the tennis courts years ago.

Now, he works with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and contributes to the drug development process.

“We check the biochemical characterization of HIV proteins,” Rao said. “We run various reactions with the HIV proteins to determine their biological characteristics and how the virus mutates to become resistant to approved drugs. Once we do that, we can help choose drugs to overcome that resistance.”

This process serves as the precursor to clinical trials, which ultimately leads to drugs going on the market.

While the work is classified as basic research, Rao is happy to do his part.

“You can’t do applied research without the basic research,” Rao said. “In science, creating the foundation for others to build upon is critical.”

#IAmScience Ashten Kimble

January 26, 2018 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biology, plant science

By Allison Scott | Bond LSC

“#IAmScience because I am constantly learning and questioning. We try to understand life in order to improve it, but every answer brings on new questions and new areas to advance.”

If you walked into Ashten Kimble’s apartment, you’d notice immediately that it’s filled with plants. While some plant biologists refrain from caring for plants on their days off, the graduate student embraces being surrounded by life.

As a part of Walter Gassmann’s Lab in Bond LSC, Kimble is able to analyze the inner workings of plants, too. Her dissertation is about understanding the relationship between a plant’s defense mechanisms and proteins from pathogens like viruses, bacteria and fungi.

“The plant tries to stop the pathogen from invading it, but to do that it has to recognize proteins the pathogen sends inside it,” Kimble said. “I’m trying to see if it’s enough for the plant to recognize half of a pathogen protein and still be able to stop it.”

If a plant is unable to stop the invasion, its fate is sealed.

“The pathogen infects the plant leaf by leaf until it shuts down,” Kimble said.

Specifically, Kimble works with Arabidopsis — a model that is believed to have applicable characteristics to other plants. That means the impact of her findings can be great.

“If the plant can recognize the pathogen protein, I want to know what part of the plant’s DNA that occurs in,” Kimble said. “If I can identify a region [of the plant where it occurs], that information could translate to other plants.”

Doing so could lead to a significant shift in food safety; however, plant diseases are constantly changing.

“We have to think of things in an evolutionary scale,” Kimble said. “I’m working on a specific gene, but in the future what we know about it could change and be very different.”

That would put a wrench in her findings, but the ever-changing nature of plant pathogens serves as a point of excitement for Kimble.

“It keeps things interesting,” Kimble said. “From a science perspective, it’s a good thing. It’s something new to explore.”

The variety in her day-to-day experiences in the lab mirrors why Kimble pursued an education in plants in the first place. She worked in agriculture and was entranced by everything plants are capable of.

“I like the variety of things I can do with plants, whether it’s in the field, a greenhouse or the lab,” Kimble said.

After graduation in Summer 2019, Kimble hopes to enter the industry side of science. She wants to encourage others, especially those who wouldn’t consider themselves science-savvy, to better understand what exists at the root of research.

“I think it’s important for people to be curious and question what they’re told,” Kimble said. “If people seek out knowledge first hand, rather than just go off what they are told, they have better information to make decisions.”

#IAmScience Braden Zink

January 19, 2018 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biofortification, biology, plant science

By Allison Scott | Bond LSC

“#IAmScience because I have learned to think critically and approach scientific unknowns in a way that will prepare me for a career as a successful physician.”

Labs aren’t born in a day. Neither are researchers.

Braden Zink, a senior biology major, could tell story after story about just that. He came to Mizzou with little knowledge of university research but with the determination to get his feet wet. As a member of Ruthie Angelovici’s lab, he did both.

“I came to college completely unaware of how research worked and the kinds of problems that research scientists work to solve,” Zink said. “I joined Dr. Angelovici’s lab during her first year as an MU professor and was thrilled to have the opportunity to help get it off the ground.”

With the lab’s goal of improving sustainability and nutritional quality of seeds, Zink has been able to make great strides in plant sciences. His current project is focused on how the size of seeds relate to their metabolic profiles.

“I had to come up with a way to measure Arabidopsis seeds because they’re the size of salt grains,” Zink said. “I came up with a protocol and performed size analysis on hundreds of ecotypes. My ultimate goal is to identify a gene or several that explain the observed variation in seed size.”

Last summer, Zink took advantage of working as a full-time researcher at Bond LSC.

“My work this past summer led to the conclusion that there’s a significant negative correlation between seed size and the quantity of several amino acids,” Zink said. “In general, I discovered that bigger seeds have proportionally less amino acids.”

This information led him to a working hypothesis that metabolic adjustments other than amino acids must be responsible for seed size variation.

Zink was able to work all summer solely on his research in Bond LSC thanks to the Cherng Summer Scholars grant funded by the founders of Panda Express, who happen to be Mizzou alumni. As one of 12 recipients — making it the most competitive grant for undergraduates — Zink’s dedication to his craft was recognized in a big way.

“I was able to focus intensely on my research and was immersed in it. Over the summer I didn’t have obligations to course work, so I was really able to be all in,” Zink said. “I believe what I’ve accomplished in research will help to set me apart from other candidates as I apply to medical school this year.”

He took his findings from the summer and presented as part of the Missouri EPSCoR program, which is run by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide more financial resources to scientifically underfunded states.

“I presented the poster as one of around 80 Missouri scholars,” Zink said. “Included in the presenters were students at all levels below professor, so it really highlighted what up-and-coming scientists are doing.”

After the event in late August, Zink was one of 10 presenters chosen to move forward and share their work in front of a national committee of NSF scientists. As the only undergraduate student selected from the state, it was an exciting opportunity.

“It was a closed room presentation with scientists whose work I’ve been reading for a while asking me questions about my science, so it was nerve-wracking,” Zink said. “While intimidating, this was also an incredible opportunity for my work to undergo an acid-test. Having my project hold water while being evaluated by nationally recognized scientists was an experience that confirmed that the work I’m doing is both professional and meaningful.”

While his accomplishments as an undergraduate researcher speak for themselves, Zink’s next step is medical school.

“Ideally, I want to become a cardiologist,” Zink said. “I’ve shadowed Dr. Greg Flaker — a seasoned cardiologist and head of cardiac research at the University of Missouri Hospital — and the work is something I could see myself doing in my professional career. I see this as an opportunity to offer critically ill patients 10 or 15 more years of life. It is a force that drives me towards joining this field.”

Zink plans to incorporate the lessons he’s learned at Bond LSC on his path to becoming a cardiologist.

“I’ll be doing a lot of the same style of critical thinking I do now,” Zink said. “Research has helped me do things that most undergraduates don’t get to. It helps you get ahead of the ball.”

Although there are more discoveries to be made, Zink is happy to contribute what he can to get things moving in the right direction.

“I understand that the contributions I’ve made — and continue to make — will only be a drop in a massive bucket,” Zink said. “However, each drop in this bucket is necessary if it is ever to be filled.”

#IAmScience Madison Ortega

December 29, 2017 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biology, MARC/IMSD

By Allison Scott | Bond Life Sciences Center

“#IAmScience because research gives me an avenue to explore my curiosity and possibly discover something groundbreaking.”

Research is all about discovering the answers to the unknown, pushing boundaries and exploring the depths of the field. As a junior biology major, Madison Ortega is already getting a taste of that.

Her freshman year, Ortega got a brochure for the Maximizing Access to Research Careers/Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (MARC/IMSD) program. This program encourages students to get involved with science even if they have had little exposure to it previously. Its ultimate goal is to provide a foundation of advanced science skills for minorities that can be applied to higher degrees within the field.

“I got to start exploring research right away through IMSD,” Ortega said. “It gave me the opportunity to look into various labs.”

Ortega landed on working in Cheryl Rosenfeld’s lab at Bond LSC because she felt she would have ample opportunities. That experience has led her to an individual project working on samples of spiny rats — an endangered species from Japan.

“The male doesn’t have a Y chromosome, so we’re trying to figure out how sexual differentiation occurs in the species without it,” Ortega said.

Through Bond LSC, she connected with Hokkaido University in Japan who donated the samples.

“They’re not fresh samples — they’re about 10 years old,” Ortega said. “But I showed interest in the project and ended up getting to work on it one-on-one with our lab mentor.”

In addition to her individual project, Ortega works with other undergraduates within her lab.

“We’re doing a variety of experiments that include social testing on mice,” Ortega said. “We do anxiety testing and also perform Barnes maze with the animals.”

These mazes and tests aim to see the impact of chemicals in the environment that mimic hormones like estrogen and impact animal growth and development.

“Basically, we’re trying to see how endocrine disruptors we feed the mice affect their offspring,” Ortega said. “We want to know how it affects them neurologically. In order to accomplish this, we are collaborating with various other groups in Bond LSC.”

Ultimately, they’re aiming to uncover if Bisphenol S (BPS) has any impact on the mice neurologically. These substances are similar to Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used as a hardener in production of plastics and in other manufacturing. As concern has raised over BPA, companies have replaced the chemical with BPS and others to allay public anxiety over its impact. But not much research has been done on BPS and its effect on animals.

“They may be found to have some neurological effects, so research is trying to uncover what exactly those are,” Ortega said. “The many tests we run will help us understand to the extent these chemicals are affecting us.”

After graduation, Ortega envisions herself continuing with research as a focal point of her career.

“I love research,” Ortega said. “My end goal is medical school, but I’m considering a program that combines a master’s degree with a Ph.D. in either dermatology or pediatrics.”

Regardless of her path, the lab work she does now leaves her prepared for the future.

“I spend a lot of time in the lab with my team and individually,” Ortega said. “It’s fun to have ownership of a project, and it’s also fun to work with other undergraduates and have camaraderie. I’m really fortunate.”

#IAmScience Lisa Caesar

November 17, 2017 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biology

By Allison Scott | Bond Life Sciences Center

“#IAmScience because education and my pursuit of learning became my ticket out of poverty and a way that I can really help others.”

“Mother knows best” rings true for Gerialisa Caesar. In her family, the career options were either to be a lawyer, engineer or doctor.

But with little interest in law and a greater love for science than math, Caesar decided to pursue her doctorate.

“I graduated high school at 16 fully equipped to enter the work force,” Caesar said. “I went back to school to study science because my mom basically told me I had to, but biology fit me really well, so it worked out.”

Initially, Caesar was hesitant that she could even become a scientist.

“I had an idea of what a scientist was, and it wasn’t me,” Caesar said. “After I immigrated from Guyana, my undergraduate advisors, Drs. Carroll and Catapane, explained the opportunities I had to study biology. It opened the world of possibilities for me to pursue science.”

Now, as a biological sciences Ph.D. candidate in Laura Schulz’s lab, Caesar focuses on women’s health and reproductive biology.

“My research is to understand how a mother’s nutrition prior to and during pregnancy affects the baby’s development,” Caesar said. “This is important as several studies link maternal diet during pregnancy to an increase in susceptibility of the offspring developing diseases such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension in adulthood.”

That includes connecting how mother’s diets cause fetal health issues, which is a highly debated topic.

“For example, a lot of women are told to take folic acid pills during pregnancy,” Caesar said. “Doing that has been tied to help with neural development concerns — things like spina bifada [a birth defect that affects developing babies’ spinal cords]. Understanding the mechanisms that make that occur would aid in developing better interventions to prevent such occurrences.”

As a result, Caesar’s research has the ability to help the world’s greatest health concerns in an impactful way.

“My work is directly contributing to prevent health issues that exist for future generations,” Caesar said. “Knowing that is motivating.”

After she earns her Ph.D., Caesar would love to work for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The CDC has immediate response teams that react to major disease concerns. Being a part of that would be incredible,” Caesar said. “There’s something about working for the CDC and being able to have a meaningful impact within the community that calls me.”

Caesar plans to channel that passion regardless of where she ends up, though.

“Biology is literally the study of life,” Caesar said. “As much as I thought science was challenging, I am able to see how it affects everyday life. I have a purpose, and I know what I do is going to make a difference.”

#IAmScience Ronnie LaCombe

October 20, 2017 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biology

By Allison Scott | Bond LSC

“#IAmScience because I feel most alive when I’m talking to people, both in and out of my field, about my work.”

While other kids were playing with Legos and dolls, Ronnie LaCombe was exploring the world through a microscope.

Alongside her cousins, LaCombe used science at an early age as both a way of learning and for entertainment.

“I’ve always wanted to be a scientist,” LaCombe said. “In third grade I told everyone I was going to be planetologist — a scientist who studies planets. Although that didn’t pan out, I guess I always knew science was the path for me.”

Years later she’s working in D Cornelison’s lab studying protein interactions in cells of rhabdomyoscarcoma, a form of childhood cancer. Specifically, the fifth-year biological sciences Ph.D. candidate is trying to uncover why a protein that’s typically on the outside of a cell is located inside the nucleus in this form of cancer.

“I was looking at the cells and saw that this protein was in the nucleus and not on the outside,” LaCombe said. “At first, I thought it was fake. I followed up on it, and it ended up being something potentially significant.”

After noticing the unusual location of the protein in the cell, LaCombe and others in her lab looked into other species to see if it existed in them, too. When they saw the structure was the same in both dogs and mice they knew it meant something.

“We were jumping up and down once as we saw it was in three different species,” LaCombe said. “That validated what we had thought earlier about it being something significant and not a mistake.”

Now, the lab’s test is to figure out why the protein is there and if it’s functioning the in the same way it would if it were outside of the cell.

“Cells touch each other and talk to each other through the proteins on the outside of the cell,” LaCombe said. “We’re trying to figure out what the protein is doing since it’s in the nucleus rather than at the surface.”

At this point, they’re still looking into how this is possible and what it means for this type of cancer.

“The hope is to figure out a method that can be used in other forms of cancer,” LaCombe said.

Until that solution is discovered, LaCombe is happy to put the puzzle together piece-by-piece.

“Research is like one very long, often very difficult, puzzle that you don’t always have all the pieces to,” LaCombe said. “I enjoy the challenge, though, and the difficulty of it makes solving the puzzle even more satisfying.”

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