Studying Early Development
“Be creative.” These are two words that come back to me repeatedly. I was standing in Bill Smith’s office after about two months of hands on training. I had a result that made no sense to me. “Be creative” was what I was told by Dr. Smith, that was all and later I realized, everything. When I think of my development as a researcher and a thinker this is a key moment. I went back to my desk, brainstormed and, eventually, figured it out.
Adapted from the Smith Lab and rankopedia. When Ascidians are larvae they have a precursor to the spine (as seen to the left). In the image, this precursor is lit up with a fluorescent green protein that was introduced into the larvae to study spinal development. Adult Ascidians lose their spinal precursor (as seen to the right).
While I was employed as a technician, Bill Smith treated me more as though I was graduate student. I was given independence after my initial training period. I went to every research talk that I could.
My projects were varied. Initially, I studied how blood is specified in early development using the African clawed frog embryos. Later, my projects focused on how the precursor to the spine develops using Ascidians, or sea squirts, which are organisms that have no spine. Ascidians are protochordates. They are animals that have the precursor to a spine as larvae, but lose it when they reach their adult form. Their simplicity allows for insight into an incredibly complex process.
Adapted from Veeman et. al. A link to the paper can be found here. The larvae at the bottom of the image shows normal development. The larvae above it are mutants with shortened spinal precursors.
To study a process, we looked at the process when it fails. In this case we looked at mutants with deformed spinal precursors in hopes of better understanding disease. We tried to figure out what gene caused a given defect. Under the guidance of Michael Veeman, I developed a new method in the lab to identity two genes that resulted in defects in the development of the primitive spinal chord. Tangentially, we also studied the development of simple photoreceptors, the cells that respond to light and allow us to see. The independence and variety of experiments were central to my development as a researcher.
I never was able to watch the embryos divide without a sense of wonderment and curiosity of how a single cell can divide, how symmetry is broken, and how tissues twist to produce such complexity. Thinking back on those moments I still have that feeling of wonderment. It is incredible and beautiful to me that such complexity can develop and that it works.