Students seemed to be both surprised and excited that a scientist of
such high caliber would offer his time to help advance their science,
said Ramona Neunuebel, assistant professor of biological sciences at UD.
An important takeaway message from the students interaction with
Mello is that research is most successful when we collaborate and share
knowledge.
After speaking with those students, he delivered the Department of Biological Sciences annual Arnold M. Clark Memorial Lecture to more than 200 people at Wolf Hall.
And later, he was reunited with UDs Pew Scholars in the Biomedical
Sciences, whom he knows from his work as chair of the national advisory
committee that selects the winners of those prestigious awards. UDs Pew
Scholars include Salil Lachke (biological sciences, 2012), April Kloxin (chemical and biomolecular engineering, and material science and engineering, 2013) and Catherine Grimes (chemistry and biochemistry, 2014).
It is remarkable, Mello said, that UD has three Pew Scholars and it should be commended for recruiting such excellent faculty.
Ive been really impressed by whats happening at the University of
Delaware and its great to have an opportunity to come and see the
great things happening, he said. Its an exciting time for biomedical
research.
Arnold M. Clark Memorial Lecture
The 1998 discovery that led to the Nobel Prize for Mello and Fire showed that C. elegans
worms use a previously unknown process called RNA interference, which
draws on the organisms genetic memory to exert powerful control over
cellular life by silencing certain genetic functions.
The C. elegans worms are rock stars in the world of genetic
biology, where their brief life cycle (two or three weeks) gives
researchers a turbo-charged way to see how specific genetic machinery
works and insight into what is called the germline, the genetic
information that is inherited by the next generation.
Mello said C. elegans and humans share ancestry that stretches billions of years, so what the worm teaches us gives us insight into our own species.
Its humbling and fascinating and complex to see what our ancestors are able to do, he said.
Mello said his zeal for science started when he was in high
school and learned that bacteria could make human insulin. He saw that
as a powerful mechanism and his gratitude for that discovery knows no
bounds now that he has a daughter with Type 1 diabetes, whose life
depends on insulin.
His work has focused on these genetic mechanisms and he continues to
marvel over the constant flow of information between organisms and the
constant modifications they make along the way to survive.
Its more convenient for viruses and all of life to have a common
code, he said. If you cant read the other guys mail, youll be out
of luck. So the winners biologically are those that can read the other
guys code.
He compares the underlying process of RNA interference to Googles
search engine, which searches for data across the internet, tolerating
misspelled requests and delivering a trove of matches. So-called Guide
RNA allows for those searches at the genetic level, looking for coding
sequences that have been encountered before, recognizing some as
familiar, some as unfamiliar and when necessary silencing genetic
response for strategic reasons.
At one point in this research, Mello said, the lab was doing
transgene experiments introducing pieces of genetic information into
the genome of the worm by microinjection to understand what was
responsible for silencing genetic responses. A string of experiments
showed no cellular activity after certain injections. Over and over
nothing. They discarded what they guessed were errors or duds. Then one
student looked at the results another way and realized that what seemed
to be negative results were really evidence of silenced genes.
Some of the best stuff in your lab is probably in your trash can,
Mello said with a grin. There are a lot of additional secrets this
germline holds for us. We should all go back to our trash cans and hunt
for it.
Thats an important point for researchers, Neunuebel said.
For graduate students it was worthwhile hearing that as researchers
we have to embrace many potential explanations for a scientific
phenomenon, she said. Otherwise, we may miss meaningful clues.
While the potential for new genetic therapies is exciting for
medicine, Mello said he agrees with the scientific community around the
world that we are not ready to edit the human genome. Serious ethical
questions must be addressed, he said, as illustrated in the recent
scandalous work done by a Chinese scientist.
There is still a lot of potential danger, he said. It is so easy
to do and we need tighter controls. The scientific community is well
aware of this issue. CRISPR [the gene editing technology] is a very good
thing, but like anything it could be misused.
Delaware Life Science Forum
The inaugural Delaware Life Science Forum drew scores of research
scientists and entrepreneurs from UD, Delaware State University and
industry to the Audion at UDs Science, Technology and Advanced Research
Campus to discuss their work and possible collaborations.
Presentations covered a wide range of study, including UDs Velia
Fowler, chair of biological sciences; Terry Papoutsakis, professor of
chemical and biomolecular engineering; and Catherine Grimes, assistant
professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Presenting scientists from
industry included Nihmat Morjana, director of Siemens Healthineers; Adam
Marsh, chief science officer and co-founder of Genome Profiling; and
Tanja Gruber, senior staff scientist with the DuPonts Industrial
Biosciences business.
Participants also got a lot of information about UDs core
facilities and the top-tier instruments, equipment and skilled
technicians available to researchers.
Its great to see the opportunities you have here, Mello said,
maybe even to build out a medical school and increase the clinical
side. Genetics make medicine more of a hard science.
It was exciting for the assembled scientists to hear of advances in every area.
At the end of the day these are the people who are building our
longevity, said Joy Goswami, who has a background in molecular biology
and is the assistant director of technology transfer at the Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships, helping UDs innovators get their ideas to market.
And it is important to develop opportunities for these experts to collide again.
Delaware has so much talent, said John Koh, director of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute,
which organized the Life Science Forum. Science has driven so much of
Delawares economy for 200-plus years and we need to know how to engage
with each other in new ways to build an economy for the future.
We have informatics invading every area and discipline and we need
to train scientists to be literate and recognize the power of these
technologies, Koh said. We need a much more nimble workforce and there
are a lot of common threads here in public policy, regulatory issues,
biopharmaceutical manufacturing, diagnostics, biomolecular studies.
Were recognizing that all those different areas can work together. It
requires more interdisciplinary teams and building the community. So we
want to facilitate these collisions between scientists of different
areas.
In addition to UD, other forum sponsors included: the Delaware
Prosperity Partnership, the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, Delle
Donne and Associates, Delaware Business Times and Delaware INBRE.
More about Craig Mello and the Clark Lecture
Mello is the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and
co-founder of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School.
Before receiving the Nobel Prize, his work on RNAi was recognized
with the National Academy of Sciences Molecular Biology Award, the
Canadian Gairdner International Award, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig
Darmstaedter Prize and the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical
Research.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
The Arnold M. Clark Memorial Lecture was established by Dr. Howard
Hudson, CAS63, an anesthesiologist in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as a
tribute to his professor and undergraduate faculty adviser.
Clark was a professor of biology at UD from 1946 to 1981 and was instrumental in establishing the graduate program in biology.
His research areas included developmental genetics, aging, human
heredity and radiation biology. He studied Down syndrome and pushed for
the establishment of a genetic counseling program in Delaware.
Clarks passion was teaching and mentoring, and he insisted that his
undergraduate students take as many non-science courses as possible in
order to become well rounded and better able to communicate with the
public.
Article by Beth Miller; photos by Evan Krape and Suchat Pederson