IIt is a great honor to succeed Jessica Schwartz as Director of the CMB Program. During Jessica’s tenure we saw a doubling of the student population to ~80 along with significant growth in support by the CMB Training Grant. Scientifically, we have seen the growth of CMB in both depth and breadth, with an expansion of the faculty from ~70 to more than 150, encompassing areas from single molecule kinetics to translational biomedical research, while maintaining strength in the cellular, molecular and developmental biology of model systems from bacteria to mouse. Going forward, CMB students and faculty are presented with tremendous opportunities. Much is available to us because of the uniquely collaborative scientific culture within CMB and, more generally, at the University of Michigan. Expert core facilities, research centers and effective internal seed funding make it possible for both the students and faculty in CMB to think broadly and creatively about fundamental biological and biomedical problems. The fact is that in many ways, directing the CMB program is easy given the outstanding staff support of Cathy Mitchell, who is currently assisted by Nancy Hobbs, the expertise and judgment of Associate Directors Scott Barolo, Vernon Carruthers and Jill Macoska, and last, but definitely not least, the enthusiasm and energy of the CMB students and faculty.

As this newsletter goes to press, I must also report the sad news that Myron Levine, one of the founding Directors of the CMB Program and esteemed Professor Emeritus of Human Genetics, passed away on Nov. 29 after a protracted illness. Mike will be greatly missed by his colleagues in Genetics, by his former students, by the CMB program that he served so well, and of course by his family. We recognize his contributions to the program each year through the Myron Levine Lecture given at the Annual Fall Symposium. A special remembrance of Mike’s long and productive scientific career, his teaching and service to CMB and to the university will be published in the spring newsletter.

Sincerely yours,

c Mb Issue 22, Fall 2012

From the Director

newsletter

Dense collagen I-rich extracellular matrix of mouse adipose tissue.

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Student Spotlight

It is clear that the development and trajectory of a female scientist can be a slightly differ-ent journey than it is for her male colleagues. Fortunately, the University of Michigan has several outlets for women in the sciences to

create connections with one another, share their visions and concerns for their futures, and learn from their predecessors how to make their visions realities. The Univer-sity of Michigan’s Women in Science and Engineering Program (WISE) is

one such example. Directed by Dr. Cinda-Sue Davis, the program offers many different types of events to foster networking among female scientists and engineers at the university and to help guide those with less experience toward success in their careers. They have hosted events ranging from book club meetings to career panels covering a multitude of topics. To join their mailing list, please send an email to umwise@umich.edu. Another organization devoted to women in the sciences is the University of Michigan’s chapter of the Association for Women in Sci-ence (UM-AWIS). Elizabeth Adams, a CMB

student in David Ginsburg’s laboratory, is the Director of Public Relations for the chapter. I asked Adams to describe the goals of the chapter and her involvement within it, to which she responded, “Our UM-AWIS chapter offers women at all levels of scientific training the opportunity to make connections with one another and to build a network of professional support here at UM. I became involved in the UM-AWIS Chapter because I wanted to help address issues that women in science face. Through our programming, we strive not only to address these issues but also to foster a sense of community for all women in science here at Michigan.” AWIS events include Mentorship Encour-agement Groups, which are similar to panel discussions that cover many different topics, as well as seminars geared toward developing a

Campus resources available to female graduate students

by Krista Geister

particular skill set. The third meeting of the UM-AWIS Men-torship Encouragement Group took place on Dec. 7. Topics discussed ranged from issues with one’s mentor, career goals and how to attain them, and maintaining work/life balance. UM-AWIS will continue hosting these meet-ings next semester. Adams encourages any female CMB students interested in becoming involved with UM-AWIS to email her directly at adamseli@umich.edu. If you are interested in mentoring the next generation of female scientists, the University of Michigan chapter of Females Excelling More in Math, Engineering and Science (UM-FEMMES) may be just the place for you to get involved. “Through FEMMES we’re hoping to bring our love of science to girls in communities that are lacking in resources in order to eliminate the stigma surrounding women in the STEM fields,” said Jacqueline Reno, one of the organizers of UM-FEMMES. Founded at Duke University, FEMMES has spread across the country, with chapters at many institutions that organize events for girls in grades four through six. The UM chapter has two Capstone Events scheduled for the coming semester on Saturday, Jan. 26 and Saturday, April 13, as well as an After-School Activity on Monday, Feb. 25. CMB students who are interested in volunteer-ing are encouraged to contact Aviva Marchione (avivamar@umich.edu) or Leedor Lieberman (lclieber@umich.edu) for more information. ◊

For someone who appreciates the value of simple storytelling in science, Richard Yau’s career narrative in graduate school and CMB has been anything but simple. Yau, who is finishing his seventh year of training, was not a CMB student originally. He started precandidacy in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology but transferred to CMB within a month at the suggestion of his mentor at the time. Shortly afterwards he switched labs and has been working on his thesis project in Lois Weisman’s lab in the Life Sciences Institute ever since, studying organ-elle transport in yeast. But according to Yau, even the title of his project, currently “Phosphorylation dependent recruitment of a mitotic protein to a myosin V cargo adapter complex regulates cargo release,” is variable. “It changes on a monthly basis,” he says.

The mercurial nature of his graduate experi-ence hasn’t prevented Yau from being able to identify coherent and compelling storylines from his research, however. He recently placed first in the poster contest at the 2012 CMB Symposium by presenting his project in the form of an illustrated short story. “Pretty pictures,” Yau explains. “Very visu-al. Not that many words, but mostly pictures.” Yau hopes to defend his thesis in the spring and then pursue postdoctoral research oppor-tunities in translational science, most likely in cancer or stem cells in order to “broaden his horizons.” He says he appreciates his experi-ence in CMB, which has given him a valuable foundation in basic science and has supported the flexibility of his scientific interests. “People don’t understand how important it is to do basic science, and I didn’t understand when I first came in,” Yau says. “Having a lot

Richard Yau

of intellectual freedom is actually really awe-some. If something looks interesting, you go down that path. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to. So I’ve really enjoyed it.” ◊

CMB Newsletter Issue 22, Fall 2012

Krista Geister is a fifth-year CMB student in Sally Camper’s lab studying the causes and mechanisms of skeletal dysplasia and infertility.

by Heiko Yang

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• Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)

contact: Dr. Cinda-Sue Davisemail: umwise@umich.edu

• University of Michigan’s Association of Women in Science (UM-AWIS)

contact: Elizabeth Adamsemail: adamseli@umich.edu

• Females Excelling More in Math, Engi-neering and Science (UM-FEMMES)

contact: Aviva Marchione, Leedor Liebermanemail: avivamar@umich.edu, lclieber@umich.edu

YYou know the one. It’s in the last paragraph and makes some sort of claim about help-ing patients with Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, autism, or diabetes. Other than proving that your research is helping to save the world

though, it reflects the changing land-scape of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding distribu-tion. Rachel Best, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, showed in her recent paper in the October issue of American

Sociological Review that the growing influ-ence of disease lobbying groups over the past 30 years has dramatically changed the funding priorities at the NIH. Best followed 53 diseases from 1989 to 2007, collecting data annually on the amount of federal funding received, amount of advocacy targeting the disease, as well as the number and characteristics of the people the disease affected. She found that the more money advocates spent on lobbying, the more federal money was allocated to that disease. Spe-cifically, for every $1000 spent on lobbying, the NIH and the Department of Defense (DOD) spent $25,000 more on that disease the next year. In addition to exhibiting the monetary effects of lobbying on securing federal funding for research, Best makes a case for some potentially damning effects lobbying may have on the way science is conducted and who stands to benefit from biomedical advances. Disease-specific lobbying for federal funds began in the 1980s. With their arrival, disease advocates changed the metric for funding eval-uation. It is common in policy-making for a single metric to be employed to compare differ-ent interest groups in order to make decisions. Advocacy groups thus have a vested interest in shaping this metric to favor their constituency. In the ‘80s, for example, HIV/AIDS re-search was receiving much more funding than any other disease. This meant that nearly every other disease advocacy group could make the claim that their disease of interest was underfunded by the metric “dollars per death” as compared with HIV/AIDS. This metric also

That obligatory disease shout-out you put in your paper

benefited policymakers who embraced a simple and seemingly rational way to justify fund-ing allocations. Congress even took steps to standardize the NIH budget on this “dollars per death” platform in the ‘90s. Fortunately, the NIH heavily resisted this metric, noting that medical advances come from basic research as well as advances in un-related diseases; however, “dollars per death” continues to be a metric for Congress to evalu-ate NIH funding allocation. This shift away from scientific merit towards patient needs has left a lasting imprint on what type of research is funded and to what extent. Patient advocacy has certainly brought about many opportunities for researchers, but it is important to note that preferential increased funding for some diseases comes at the expense of funding for other scientific pursuits. In an interview, Best highlighted this conflict with the following statement: “Disease advocacy has attracted more public money to medical research, which could eventually have good effects on health. I worry that in the future, biomedical researchers will feel increasing pressure to target their studies

to particular diseases, at the expense of basic scientific research. I am also concerned that it will become increasingly difficult to secure funding for stigmatized diseases and diseases that kill so quickly that people don’t have time to lobby.” Of particular concern are the data showing that disease advocacy has shifted money away from diseases that primarily affect women and blacks. Demographics have become alarmingly significant in the context of federal funding. Groups able to organize and mobilize are more likely to guarantee funding increases for their disease of interest, leaving many marginalized populations behind. Disease lobbying has changed the perceived goal of biomedical research. Federal funding was previously thought of as a benefit to scien-tists or the public at large, but disease advo-cates have encouraged Congress to see patients

as the primary beneficiaries. As a result, the moral worthiness of the disease, at the expense of scientific merit, has become a factor in the justification for funding. In a letter to Repre-sentative Porter, a muscular dystrophy advocate made the following assertion about drug abuse and alcoholism research funding: “It is shocking that over $754 million is devoted to address the health problems of people whose irresponsible behavior causes those problems, while less than 1% of that sum helps children dying of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.” Lobbying of this nature has a significant negative impact on stigmatized diseases. To highlight the effects of “deservedness” on fund-ing allocation, Best tracked the funding trends for lung and liver cancers, both of which have potentially stigmatized risk factors (smoking for lung cancer; hepatitis infection and alcohol consumption for liver cancer). She found that even though these diseases met the criteria of highly funded diseases, namely high mortality, they received smaller funding increases each year than was predicted by a model controlling for advocacy and mortality.

For better or for worse, disease lobbying has clearly changed the politics and al-location of federal funding for research. Most concerning, however, is that it comes at the expense of building infrastruc-ture and support for scientists in basic research. That obligatory disease shout-out you put in your paper or grant proposal is only one symptom of a research environment that has become

controlled by an obsession with making sure every dollar spent at the bench somehow trans-lates directly to a patient’s bedside. In response to this trend, a growing base of basic science advocates such as Nobel Laureate Roger Kornberg urges politicians and scientists to support the pursuit of basic science research for its own sake, without concern for purpose or application. They point out that basic sci-ence research, in the last 100 years, has brought society antibiotics, genetic engineering and X-rays to name a few. “To solve a basic problem in medicine don’t study it directly,” Kornberg says. “Rather, pursue a curiosity about nature and the rest will follow.” ◊

For every $1000 spent on lobbying, the NIH and the Department of Defense (DOD) spent $25,000 more on that

disease the next year.

“

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Brooke Horton is a third-year CMB student in Anuj Kumar’s lab studying the molecular mechanisms of virulence in C. albicans.

CMB Newsletter Issue 22, Fall 2012

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by Brooke Horton

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CMB Newsletter Issue 22, Fall 2012

Faculty Profile

Linda Samuelson

A Q&A with a recent recipient of the PiBS Excellence in Mentorship Award: her philosopy on choosing a mentor, running a lab, and how to train your graduate student

by Heiko Yang

Tell us about your background before you came to the University of Michigan. I got my undergraduate education at that institution down the road ... green and white, Michigan State University. I grew up in East Lansing. I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. When it came time to look for po-sitions, the University of Michigan was one of the possibilities for [my husband] Joel to start his career as a faculty member, and I started my postdoc and worked with Miriam Meisler. And then I was extremely lucky to get the position in the physiology department, where I’ve been a faculty member since 1991.

You’d be interested to know that in Miri-am’s lab, Deb Gumucio was a graduate student when I started my postdoc there. She was just finishing her graduate work in Miriam’s lab. So you have an old friend on faculty? Right. And a collaborator. We’ve worked together quite a bit and we now share a lab over here [in the BSRB]. Tell us about your lab. What are the ma-jor projects, and who is working on them? My lab focuses on mechanisms that regulate epithelial cell homeostasis in the GI tract. We study both stomach and intestine, and have over the years looked at different signaling pathways and pathologies that disrupt the epithelium. Currently we’re focused on stem cells in the stomach and intestine and how they’re regu-lated to populate the epithelial cells continu-ously in life. So I have the stomach group and the intestinal group. Right now we’re kind of low [on numbers]. There are two technicians, two students, and one postdoc and I hope to expand a bit in the next year. Does each lab member work on a sepa-rate project? Everybody has his or her own project, but a lot of the projects are collaborative so that, for example, especially with the stomach-intestine work, we can use the same animals. I think it’s a very interactive, collaborative lab, but every-

body has their own dedicated project. There are no shared projects. You’ve mentored many graduate students and postdocs over the years. What kinds of training goals do you set for them? I think that’s one of the important things of being a mentor is that you need to consider defining the goals depending on the individual that you’re working with. So of course, for a graduate student, one of the obvious goals that

Lightbulb moment: I was investigating the expression of human amylase genes [during my postdoc], and I was developing the sequencing gels that we used then, and it was a mess. In addition to the ex-pected band, I had this smudgy high intensity blur at the bottom. I stared at that and said, “my probe has some overlap with a very abundant transcript in the cell.” Unnamed others in the lab said [at the time], “Oh, just cut that off. Who knows what that is?” I followed my gut, knowing that this pattern was telling me something important. It turned out that I discovered a retrotransposon that had inserted into the human amylase gene family. It started a new project for me to take to my own lab on the evolution of the promoters of this gene family through the insertion of two retrotransposons that happened during primate evolution.

You have to love what you do or it’s just too hard.“ ”

everybody has is getting a PhD. You have to mentor them through that process. But students will have different long-term objectives or different strengths and weaknesses. So you have to modulate the overall plan and the goals in order to maximize the experience for each individual. Are there any general goals you like to set for everyone? I feel like everybody needs to present their work and go to meetings, and I try to introduce them to leaders in the field so they can network and reach outside the lab as much as pos-

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CMB Newsletter Issue 22, Fall 2012

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Where are they now?

After finishing the combined MD-PhD program in 2004, I completed a resi-dency in Anesthesiology while enrolled in a research track that allowed me protected time for research. I worked closely with a mentor on a series of longitudinal projects while pursuing a Master’s Degree in Clini-cal Investigation. I am currently an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at the University of Colorado where I work half-time in the operating room and half-time on clinical/translational research. I specialize in taking care of liver transplant patients, and my research fo-cuses on perioperative coagulation issues. As for advice, finding the right mentor at some point early in your career is so important. Someone who makes you feel excited about research, who asks you ques-tions like “Where do you want to be in five years? 10 years?” and who takes the time to meet with you, to read your work, to tell you to keep going when you’re getting tired. Such a person is worth their weight in gold, and you should keep searching for them until you find them. Academics can be a bumpy, challenging road at times, and you should learn to be patient with yourself and the doubts that inevitably arise. I’ve found that being a person with passionate interests and the ability to follow through usually pays off in the end. After your PhD training, you may decide to go into industry, academics, or something that may on the surface appear unrelated to your PhD work, and that’s OK. The hard work of finishing that PhD has made you the person you are, and that person is destined to make a difference. ◊

−Cheng can be reached at sara.cheng@ucdenver.edu

Sara Cheng

Catching up with CMB graduates

... and imploring them for wisdom

sible. Of course we’re always trying to define manuscripts that students and postdocs can contribute to and be responsible for, and I feel it’s important for all trainees to write proposals for funding. Currently all three of the trainees in the lab have fellowship funding through the university or individual NIH training awards. I think that experience helps them define their overall sci-entific problems and their projects more criti-cally. It also helps them to have the experience of writing grants and getting funded. Are you more hands-on or hands-off when it comes to their daily research activi-ties? I meet with each person normally once a week. They bring their data and we discuss and look at what they’ve done and think about what’s the next step together. We talk about ideas, we talk about problems, but then I hope that they’ll be able to leave the office and go back to the bench and operationalize what we discuss. It’s a little bit of a combination. I don’t necessarily check in on a day-to-day basis, but we have frequent communications. What advice would you give to a gradu-ate student trying to find a lab?

The first thing is to really do your home-work. Spend some time looking at the various labs that you have any interest in at all. Look at the papers, and then do some networking and talk to people to see if you can get information about labs. You have to be a little careful about not overly relying on networking because there are fabulous people that maybe don’t have a student yet that need to be looked at. So do your homework and then make ap-pointments and talk to the people that hit the top of your list. And then go with your heart. Go with your gut. Find the project and the person that you connect with, and talk to the people in the lab to see whether you like the lab dynamic. Try to choose a project in a lab that is something that you love because you’re going to be spending a huge amount of time. You have to love what you do or it’s just too hard. What’s more important, the project or the lab? For PhD training I’d almost say the lab and the mentor is more important than the project, but you can’t have a project you don’t like. So who do you root for on football Satur-days? Well, I won’t answer that. ◊

Bioart

(SEM) Spider silk ensnaring an appendage of a cricket.

Regression of early stages of pancreatic cancer following Kras* inactivation. Precursor lesions are caught reprogramming from ductal-like structures (CK19-green) into normal pancreatic acinar cells (amylase-red). Cells that co-express both markers are in the process of transdiffer-entiation.

A larval brain in which the neural stem cell pool has expanded uncontrollably. George Clinton and the rest of Parliament Funkadelic couldn't possibly have guessed how funky a "Maggot Brain" can really be?

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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’

but ‘That’s funny ...’−−−−

−Isaac Asimov

“”

CMB Newsletter Issue 22, Fall 2012

CMB Student Achievements

CMB Winter 2013 Short Course: Frontiers in Gene Regulation

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Katie Baldwin Second author paper: NgR1 and NgR3 are receptors for chondroitin sulfate proteo-glycans. Nat Neurosci 2012 Mar 11;15(5):703-12.Randi Burns First place Taubman Medical Institute Symposium Poster Session AwardAlbert Chen Biology of Aging Training Grant, Rackham Student Research Grant, Rackham Travel GrantKatie Dumas DeLill Nasser Award for Professional Development in Genetics from the Genetics Society of America, Early Career Representative for the Genetics Society of America’s Board of Director, CMB 2012 Senior Student Service AwardKrista Geister Year of Funding from the U-M Reproductive Sciences Program, University of Michigan Medical School 2012 Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching and Service, CMB 2012 Senior Student Service AwardDavid Lorberbaum Rackham Research Grant, Rackham Travel Grant, Organogenesis Travel GrantYevgeniya Mironova Second author paper: “Preventing Flow-Metabolism Uncoupling Acutely Reduces Axonal Injury after Traumatic Brain In-jury.” J. Neurotrauma. 2012 May 1;29(7):1469-82. Epub 2012 Mar 29.; Third author paper: NgR1 and NgR3 are receptors for chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans. Nat Neurosci 2012 Mar 11;15(5):703-12.; Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant, Rackham Graduate Student Travel Grant, International Multiple Sclerosis Symposium Poster Session - first place awardHeiko Yang Most aesthetic poster at MSTP retreat

Scott Barolo, Ph.D.Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology

University of Michigan

Gene Regulation: Why Does It Have to Be So Complicated?

Wed. January 233:00 PM

North Lecture HallMedical Sciences II

Luciano Marraffini, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Laboratory of Bacteriology

The Rockefeller University

The CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune system of bacteria: mechanism and applications

Tues. January 293:00 PM

North Lecture HallMedical Sciences II

John Stamatoyannopoulos, M.D.Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Medicine

University of Washington, School of Medicine

Gene Regulation and Common Disease

Wed. February 203:00 PM

North Lecture HallMedical Sciences II

Karen Adelman, Ph.D.Laboratory of Molecular Carcinogenesis

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Promoter-Proximal Pausing of RNA Polymerase II: A Win-dow for Opportunities

Tues. March 193:00 PM

North Lecture HallMedical Sciences II

Register now: 1 credit (CMB 630, HG 630)Must be PIBS, CMB, or Genetics Training Grant student to register

I received my PhD in 2002 and then I did one month postdoc in Dr. Phil Andrews’ laboratory. Invitrogen recruited me at a proteomics conference and so I moved to the Department of Proteomics at Invitro-gen, where I worked as a lead scientist for a breast cancer proteomic project. I do love my proteomics research. The reason is because proteins are the ultimate functional molecules involved in most biological processes, and proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. We can always get some ”fish”, no matter how big or small, as long as we cast a wide net. In additional to disease proteomics research, I also actively worked on the development of quantitative proteomic techniques and assays for detection and quantification of disease biomarkers. My work resulted in two US patents and four new techniques and assays that have been widely used in proteomics and biomarker research. In 2006, I took the position of Principal Investigator at the US Environ-mental Protection Agency to work on the emerging field of toxicoproteomics, where I still work now. I advise young scientists to understand that science is also a fashion show. Go with the fashion. If you read Science often, you will know what is popular this year and next few years. I was a lucky guy to be able to follow the proteomics fashion show years ago. Finally, think big and stay focused. ◊

−Ge can be reached atge.yue@epa.gov

Where are they now?

Yue Ge

Catching up with CMB graduates

... and imploring them for wisdom

CMB newsletter committee: Krista Geister, Brooke Horton, Heiko Yang; Supporting fac-ulty: Jessica Schwartz, Bob Fuller, Anuj Kumar