Spring 2014
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It’s the first Friday that feels like
spring in Providence, and late afternoon
sun streams into Sidney E. Frank Hall
for Life Sciences as the campus shifts
into weekend mode. A few students are
still working in the second-floor laboratory
of Susan Gerbi, founding chair of
the Department of Molecular Biology,
Cell Biology and Biochemistry and the
George Eggleston Professor of Biochemistry.
Gerbi buzzes between the
lab and her office, doing what she does
best in the intersecting realms of teaching
and research.
“Susan’s lab is always filled with students,”
says colleague Kenneth Miller ’70,
P’02, a professor of biology. “She’s the
sort of mentor who gives full credit to
everyone working with her, and she
encourages a cooperative and fertile lab
environment.”
In the span of an hour, Gerbi cajoles
an off-campus colleague to continue a
research project, advises a post-doctoral
fellow about an experiment he’s conducting
under a grant from the Department
of Defense Breast Cancer Research
Program, and takes a visitor on a virtual
tour of her 40-year career in cell biology
and scientific thought leadership.
It all happens against a backdrop of
concern and advocacy for the future
of scientific enterprise.
Bootstrapping
Gerbi arrived in 1972, fresh from graduate
work at Yale and postdoctoral training at Germany’s Max Planck Institute.
Brown and Pembroke had just merged.
The Corporation had just approved the
full MD program. And Gerbi’s startup
package was a princely $2,500. (She should
have known that this was an institution
without deep pockets, she notes wryly,
when Brown declined to chip in for airfare
during her job interview but did
offer to pick up her $14.28 bus fare.)
It was a challenging moment in
science. The Nixon Administration had
frozen federal research funding, and
young scientists had to bootstrap their
labs. “We got really thrifty,” she remembers.
“For instance, we discovered that
you can re-use pH paper if you wash it in
distilled water.” Despite the arid funding
environment, Gerbi’s generation of
researchers opened up vistas of new
knowledge in basic science.
As time went on, Gerbi became a
vocal, national-level advocate for research
and graduate education as president of
the American Society for Cell Biology and
through leadership roles in the Association
of American Medical Colleges and
the Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology. Armed with major
grants from the National Institutes of
Health, National Science Foundation, and
American Cancer Society, she became an
internationally recognized researcher in
ribosomal RNA and in DNA replication.
These areas are fundamental to an
understanding of cell growth and cell
division—work that may benefit people with cancer, a fact that took on special
poignancy when Gerbi became a breast
cancer survivor a few years ago.
Enter the Sciara
Critical to Gerbi’s work is Sciara
coprophila, a fungus gnat that contributes
the DNA puffs of its giant salivary
gland chromosomes to the research. The
International Stock Center for the fly,
handed down through a line of researchers
since the 1920s, resides in Gerbi’s lab.
“The many unique features of Sciara’s
chromosome biology provide terrific
models for understanding the underlying
molecular mechanisms of the more
canonical processes in humans and other
organisms,” Gerbi explains.
“Initiation of DNA synthesis is the
major check point in the cell cycle,”
she adds, explaining that the cell is
committed to divide once the genome
has been replicated. “We’re using Sciara’s
DNA puffs, which represent sites of intrachromosomal
gene amplification, to
identify specific regions and sequences
where DNA synthesis begins.”
To facilitate the inquiry, Gerbi’s
team developed Replication Initiation
Point mapping to identify the start sites
of DNA synthesis at the nucleotide level,
and have used the technique to show
that—in yeast as well as in the Sciara—
the site of initiation of replication is directly
adjacent to the Origin Recognition
Complex binding site. With that
information in hand, they could then
explore how Sciara DNA puffs override
the cellular controls that permit DNA to
be replicated just once per cell cycle.
Gene amplification is a hallmark of several
types of cancer, but it is not possible
to study the initiating event in cancer cells; hence the usefulness of the Sciara
DNA puff model system. Preliminary
data suggest that ecdysone, a steroid
hormone, induces DNA amplification,
providing the first example of hormonal
regulation of DNA replication. The next
question is whether estrogen acts in a
similar manner for human breast cancer.
A few years ago, fresh from her
own struggle with the disease and immersed
in recovering lost momentum
in publishing and grant funding, Gerbi
purchased a life insurance policy with
the Genetic Society of America as
beneficiary, providing a fund that would
allow it to maintain the Sciara Stock
Center for the future generations who
will explore its unique chromosome
biology and elucidate mechanisms of
translational relevance to medicine.
It’s a unique solution, but part of a
broad entrepreneurial approach familiar
to scientists everywhere. And entrepreneurial
thinking is more critical than
ever, says Gerbi.
Back to the Future
The funding environment for basic
science research has come full circle
since she started, Gerbi observes—back
to extreme austerity. “We are in crisis,”
she says. “There have never been so many
consecutive years of a difficult funding
environment. It’s affecting people’s careers.
Brown has extended its time to
tenure by one year in recognition of the
fact that it’s so hard for people to get
started. So many young researchers are
finding themselves with a less full story
to tell, due to lack of early funding.”
“The difficulty faced by faculty
members in obtaining grants discourages
their students from pursuit of a research
career,” adds Gerbi, noting that
in a previous “grant drought” the percentage
of Brown undergrads in Biomed
concentrations dropped from 12 percent
to 6 percent.
Gerbi fears that a brain drain may
occur and that the epicenters of research
will move abroad. “It takes a long
time to build up know-how in a field,”
she says. “[Nobel laureate] Tom Cech, at
the University of Colorado, stated in a
recent report that it’s not inconceivable
that there could come a day, for instance,
when we need a new antibiotic for a new
disease that’s manufactured by a multinational
pharmaceutical company in a
country that happens to be at odds with
the United States.”
Nobel laureate Craig Mello ’82, SCD’07
hon., P’14—a former student of Gerbi’s
now based at UMass Medical School—
shares her concern. “There’s a huge
amount of pressure on the scientific enterprise,
as scientific opportunities outpace
federal funding cycles,” he says. “It’s
well known that only the top few proposals
can be funded in this environment,
to the extent that a lot of people
aren’t even bothering to apply.”
“Science is the driving force behind
our technological civilization, and it
moves forward in huge leaps, not at a
rate of 2 or 5 percent a year,” Mello continues,
noting that funding is especially
tight for basic science. “In a very
short time, a few decades, we have come
from just beginning to probe the basic
mechanisms of the cell to understanding
fundamental molecular mechanisms
of many diseases. While of course
we need to spend money on applying
discoveries that have been made, we
also need to continue to fill the pipeline.
Our understanding of basic cellular
biology is still very incomplete.”
“Basic science is the engine that
leads to fundamental new insights,” he
adds. “Failure to fund it adequately, as
President Obama said, is like throwing
the engine out of a plane and expecting
it to continue to fly. On the other hand,
not adequately funding translational
science is also tragic, as one would fear
that new, life-saving therapies might
never get tested. To pick up on the President’s
analogy, it seems like biomedical
scientists are being asked to disassemble
the engine in order to build landing gear.
And it’s not a good solution.”
Slackers Need Not Apply
Mello was at the dawn of his scientific
career when he took the advanced cell
biology course Bio 1050—team-taught
by Gerbi and Miller—as an undergraduate.
“What a pair they were! They were
awesome,” he remembers. “One of the
things Brown has always done well is
emphasize undergraduate education,
and we’re fortunate to have really great
teachers who bring science to life, who help you get into the minds of the scientists
who’ve made the great discoveries.”
“Susan and Ken made it real for you,
and put the science in perspective, so
that you really understood the human
side of the story. I remember leaving
class looking forward to hearing the
next installment!”
“I’ve taught with Susan since I joined
the faculty 31 years ago,” says Miller,
noting that Gerbi chaired the search
committee that hired him. “I’ve always
been impressed by how often and how
thoroughly she integrates her own research
into her teaching, giving insight
into her tools, techniques, and research
findings as well as her dead ends. The
students really benefit from the fact that
they are talking to the woman who’s
actually doing or did the work.”
“Susan loves the fact that her course
has the reputation of having a heavy
workload, which means that it attracts
exactly the kind of student that she most
loves to teach,” Miller adds with a smile.
For Gerbi, working with students offers
immediate gratification as well as
hope for the future. “We are blessed to
have the students we have at Brown,”
she says. “They’re geniuses. It’s fun to
work with them.”
Beckman Scholars
Gerbi is the principal investigator on a
three-year grant from the Arnold and
Mabel Beckman Foundation, awarded
this spring, that establishes the Beckman
Scholars Program at Brown. Each
year, two top undergraduate students
will spend a full year pursuing a collaborative
research project with a Brown
faculty mentor and a co-mentor at the
Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at
Woods Hole, MA. (The University has
had a joint education and research program
with the MBL since 2003.)
“It’s an extremely competitive grant
and a quite prestigious award,” says
David Targan, associate dean for science
education and director of Brown’s
Science Center.
“The grant will enable students to act
as links between Brown and the MBL, as
they already do at Brown, [forging collaborations]
across departments,” he adds.
“The Beckman scholars will be engaged in
projects over a period of time that is long
enough to weave connections that will be
sustainable long-term. We think students
and faculty at Brown and the MBL will
create some very interesting science. We
plan to build upon the affiliation, so more
students can participate. Beckman students
may well go on to become Churchill,
Goldwater, or even Rhodes Scholars.”
It’s a critical initiative for Gerbi.
“The Program is a wonderful opportunity
to stimulate interest in research
careers among undergraduates early in
their college experience,” she says.
“Susan’s heart is in research and
teaching, and from those pursuits come
her interests in securing appropriate
levels of funding—for research and for
training the next generation,” says Professor
Emeritus of Neuroscience James
T. McIlwain, Gerbi’s husband. “She’s felt
a responsibility to make her voice heard
in the public arena on their behalf. I
think she sees advocacy as her lifelong
community service project.”
Eileen O’Gara-Kurtis is the founder and president of Silver Branch Communications and a frequent contributor to Brown Medicine.
|  Gerbi in her lab. | | | |
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