All posts by Judith M. Hollander

articles, February 2021, Satire

Considerations for measuring body temperature: a case study

February 27, 2021 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

SHORT COMMUNICATION

Dr. Morn Ingbrew¹

¹Sunnyside University, Department of Science™

Abstract:
Temperature screening was initially used during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the entry of potentially infectious individuals into public places, either via infrared thermometers at the door, or through attestation that one is not running a fever. Despite overwhelming evidence that it doesn’t matter (plenty of people with COVID-19 do not run a fever), this is still somehow the standard for weeding out, well, a random assortment of people. Most households have access to an oral thermometer – be it of the digital or staggeringly archaic mercury variety (how are those still around?) – that can be used for screening, yet little attention has been paid to the potential effects of food or drink on oral temperature during these times. The results of this case study suggest that more attention to this topic is warranted if temperature is to be used as a non-laughable screening tool during a global pandemic.

Introduction:
In December of 2019, a number of pneumonia cases were reported in Wuhan, China. These were later found to be caused by a novel strain of coronavirus, termed SARS-CoV-2 [1]. SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to the viruses that caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) pandemics in 2003 and 2012, respectively [2]. Patients with these viruses often, but not always (because that would be too strong of a statement), present with “cold-like” symptoms, loss of taste and smell, and a fever.

Identifying individuals with fever was considered a priority at the beginning of the pandemic. Infrared thermography allows for rapid detection (less than or equal to 1 second) of the temperature of an individual, making it an excellent candidate for screening moving populations of people. Furthermore, most households have access to an oral thermometer (seriously, who greenlit the mercury ones?) that could be used for at-home screening prior to leaving the house each day, if one were disciplined enough to do so daily. Some studies have shown high levels of sensitivity and specificity from infrared thermometers [3]. Other research from previous pandemics suggests that the risk of missing febrile individuals using infrared thermometers could be up to 85%, so it’s unclear why this was a priority at all [4].

Since SARS-CoV-2 can spread asymptomatically (the incidence of asymptomatic individuals ranges from 1.6% to 56.5% in the literature, a terribly useless estimate), I cannot stress enough how likely it is that many potential spreaders will be missed using this strategy, regardless of whether the thermometer is a standard oral thermometer or an infrared doo-hickey.

Nevertheless, I embarked on a journey to conduct the most important experiment of our time, a study of many volunteers (n=1) to determine how the measurement of body temperature changes after drinking a beverage.

Methods:
Body temperature measurement
Body temperature was measured using a standard drugstore oral thermometer (BD Consumer Healthcare Model #403001) in ˚F (because who cares about metric anyways?).

Hot Coffee
8 ounces (237 mL) of coffee (Green Mountain Nantucket Blend) was brewed using a Keurig (192˚F brewing temperature). 1 teaspoon (4 g) of sugar and 2 ounces (60 mL) of lactose free whole milk (Hood®) was added prior to consumption. Baseline body temperature was measured prior to brewing the coffee. The coffee was brewed and imbibed within 21 minutes. The coffee was the test subject’s first oral intake of the day. Body temperature was measured immediately after the coffee was finished (t = 0 min) and every 5 minutes thereafter for 30 minutes. The test subject remained on the couch and did not move significantly during this time period.

Cold Coffee
The test subject (okay it’s me, I am the test subject) measured their baseline body temperature before preparing 8 ounces of cold coffee at 4˚C from a coffee stock and milk (both stored in the refrigerator). The coffee was imbibed within 21 minutes. The coffee was the test subject’s first oral intake of the day. Body temperature was measured immediately after the coffee was finished (t = 0 min) and every 5 minutes thereafter for 30 minutes. The test subject remained on the couch and did not move significantly during this time period.

Statistical Analysis
Data were analyzed in GraphPad Prism 9.0.1 by ordinary one-way ANOVA followed by the Holm- Šídák test to correct for multiple comparisons, because that one sounded the fanciest. All comparisons were made to the baseline temperature.

Results:

**Figure 1.** Temperature fluctuation after a hot beverage. Points are mean ± standard deviation, n = 4, **, p < 0.01. ****, p < 0.0001.

After drinking 8 ounces of a hot beverage, a sharp increase in body temperature was observed in the subject. However, this increase did not reach the level of a “fever” which the United States Centers for Disease Control considers 100.4˚F (38˚C) [5]. By 10 minutes post-beverage, the difference in temperature from baseline was no longer significant.

**Figure 2.** Temperature fluctuation after a cold beverage. Points are mean ± standard deviation, n = 3. *, p < 0.05. ***, p < 0.001.

After drinking 8 ounces of a cold beverage, a large decrease in body temperature was observed. Similar to what was observed in the hot beverage trial, the subject’s body temperature was no longer significantly different from the baseline temperature after 10 minutes.

Discussion:
This case study demonstrates how measured body temperature changes with oral intake of beverages. As expected, hot beverages increased measured temperature of the subject and cold beverages decreased it. However, I had to show it, or people wouldn’t think I had done the work. Interestingly, the body temperature normalized within 10 minutes in contrast to some reports which showed that it took 15-20 minutes to normalize body temperature [6, 7].

Self-reported fevers are likely to rely on oral temperature readings (I have no evidence of this, but I feel strongly that it is the case). This study shows, however, that care must be taken when using oral thermometers for screening fevers, since the measured body temperature can fluctuate with oral intake. When screening for fevers in the context of a global pandemic, it is arguably more concerning to potentially miss an individual whose temperature has been artificially lowered by consumption of a cold beverage than to “catch” an individual whose temperature has been artificially elevated by a hot one. These results suggest waiting at least 10 minutes after drinking to measure body temperature orally.

While this study is limited to temperature measured orally, it is not difficult to extrapolate the results to temperatures measured by infrared thermometers. A study by Jay et al. in 2007 showed that mean skin temperature, measured by thermocouples at 12 sites on the body, increases with exercise, suggesting that a habituation period might be warranted for any febrile screening procedures to ensure accurate temperature measurements, regardless of mode of measurement [8].

Acknowledgements:
No one, because no one funded the author for this research. They are an independent researcher who doesn’t need a funding agency anyway.

I’m just kidding. Please fund me.

References:
[1] Cucinotta D and Vanelli M. (2020) WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic. Acta Biomed 91(1):157-160.

[2] Yang Y, Peng F, Wang R, et al. (2020) The deadly coronaviruses: The 2003 SARS pandemic and the 2020 novel coronavirus epidemic in China. J Autoimmun 109:102434.

[3] Tay MR, Low YL, Zhao X, et al. (2015) Comparison of Infrared Thermal Detection Systems for mass fever screening in a tropical healthcare setting. Public Health 129:1471-1478.

[4] Bitar D, Goubar A, and Desenclos JC. (2009) International travels and fever screening during epidemics: a literature review on the effectiveness and potential use of non-contact infrared thermometers. Eurosurveillance 14(6):19115.

[5] U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Accessed 23 Feb 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/air/reporting-deaths-illness/definitions-symptoms-reportable-illnesses.html

[6] Quatrara F, Coffman J, Jenkins T, et al. (2007) The effect of respiratory rate and ingestion of hot and cold beverages on the accuracy of oral temperatures measured by electronic thermometers. MedSurg Nurs 16(2):105-108.

[7] Mousa O, Al Saleh K, Al Subaie, et al. (2018) Effects of cold and hot beverage on oral temperature. IOSR J Nurs Health Sci 7(4):24-27.

[8] Jay O, Reardon FD, Webb P, et al. (2007) Estimating changes in mean body temperature for humans during exercise using core and skin temperatures is inaccurate even with a correction factor. J Appl Physiol 103:443-451.

articles, January 2021

Routine Examination: Maintaining Good Mental Health During a Global Pandemic

January 22, 2021 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

As a 6^th year student, I’ve benefitted quite a bit from listening to students before me when they talked about successful time management. This article is meant to be more than just an article on time management, though; it’s also an article about resilience, and coping strategies, and how all of it affects our work. And maybe how, when everything else fails, having a little bit of a routine can help.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote that “people have enough to live by, but nothing to live for; they have the means, but no meaning” [1]. We are taught as scientists that it is the science itself that should drive us, that if we are passionate enough about science, if we’re curious enough, we’ll succeed. Anyone who fails must not have had enough passion, we’re told.

I don’t believe that’s true.

During this pandemic, it’s so easy for academia to continue with a mantra akin to “passion will drive science forward.” To me, it seems much more about resilience, defined in the social sciences as a measure of the ability to cope with stress [2]. People who are resilient recognize the limits of their control, have an action-oriented approach, are patient and flexible, and have goals (perhaps life goals?), among other things [2, 3]. While some of our reaction to stress can be attributed to genetics, there are certain skills that can be cultivated to increase our resilience [4]. One example is increasing the amount of active coping, such as exercise, looking for social support, mindfulness, or reframing stressors more positively [4-6].

I realize that this can sound strange to us as biomedical scientists rather than social scientists, but there is a body of literature (some of which is cited here), suggesting that resilience can protect employees from work-related stress, and that it could explain why some people thrive in environments where others burn out [7]. Right now, we’re in an environment where many of us will burn out—if not from the stress of graduate school, then from the added stress of a pandemic. It is critical, then, that we foster resilience in populations of graduate students who have been shown to experience higher levels of depression and anxiety than the larger population (I’ve written about this here).

The link between resilience and having a schedule/maintaining a routine may not be immediately obvious. It turns out that many of the predictors of resilience (goals, social support, personal reflection included in mindfulness study, etc.), as well as having a meaning in life, are also predictors of happiness [8]. Maintaining routine also gives us a sense of stability. Research on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has shown that avoidance coping strategies, including reducing routine activities to avoid triggering places, was a significant predictor for functional impairment [9]. Much research is devoted to the effects of family routines and daily routines on child development, but much less is discussed regarding the effects of these things on adult individuals [10]. I think, however, that some level of routine is good for all of us, even if that routine consists mainly of going to work and coming home again. Routines help us build healthy habits.

Perhaps that’s why so many of us have struggled during this pandemic. Academic science is by nature a flippy-floppy, unstructured business, and when COVID-19 took away the last piece of structure—going into the lab every day—many of us were left wondering what to do with all that new free time. The shutdown really gave me a chance to codify what works for me as a daily routine and what doesn’t. Give some of these a try!

Find a space to work that isn’t in your bedroom
Not all of us have the luxury of a personal home office, but it’s best to keep work things out of your sleep space. Associating your bedroom with work, especially stressful work, can blur the lines of work-life balance. Just because we’re working from home, that doesn’t mean we need to compromise our boundaries!

Make time to exercise
Personally, if I don’t exercise first thing in the morning, it doesn’t happen. Without exercise equipment at home, bodyweight exercises or outdoor cardio are going to be your best friend. Medicine in Motion has a nice workout library that’s worth checking out (as an added bonus, Tufts has its own chapter!).

Do your normal morning routine—even if you’re not going out
Shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast. Make it feel like you’re getting ready to work! It’s so tempting to stay in pajamas with a blanket and take Zoom calls from bed, but even if your camera is off and your labmates can’t see you, you won’t feel prepared to work and your brain won’t engage in it. Pretend that you’re going into the lab and bring your A-game to the zoom-room.

Normalize your sleep schedule
Wake up and go to bed at the same time each day. Keeping a consistent sleep schedule is referred to as “sleep hygiene.” Sleep hygiene is critical for maintaining your body’s circadian rhythm, which tells you when to wake up and when to wind down for the day. If you constantly switch what time you’re waking up or going to bed, your body won’t know when to help you wake up on any given day. This goes hand-in-hand with working outside your bedroom and breaking any association you may have between work and sleep. It’s actually best to do this every day, even when there isn’t a global pandemic (and yes, even on weekends!).

Find a little meaning (outside of work)
If you have a pet, it could be as simple as feeding your pet every morning and making sure they are getting the exercise and playtime they need. It might be caring for houseplants, or checking in with your parents or a close friend to make sure they are doing okay. Or perhaps living out your dreams of cooking eggplant in every possible style, just to say you’ve done it. Or crocheting baby hats for preemies in the NICU. Find something that, when you do a little bit each day, makes you feel like you accomplished something that impacts the world around you.

Expand your support network
Humans thrive on social interaction (even the most introverted of us enjoy the occasional chat). Reach out to some old friends, join a support group. Check in on people. If you’re looking to connect with people, CoronaBuddies is still available! It can be helpful to use the human inclination to follow a schedule here: set a weekly time to zoom with a friend, so that no matter how busy or isolated you otherwise feel, you’ve got that weekly visit waiting in the wings.

Cut yourself some slack…
Know that it’s totally okay if you aren’t as productive as you were before the pandemic. None of us are, especially with density restrictions and having to work around each other in a way that we didn’t have to before. Give yourself a mental health day and binge some of your favorite TV shows, talk to a friend, or cook some good food. Know that 100% effort at work may not give you 100% of the results you may have gotten pre-pandemic.

…But don’t let your guard down
This is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s so tempting to take your mask off—it’s hot, it’s itchy, it’s uncomfortable, it’s hard to breathe—but we’re still in the thick of the pandemic. The vaccine is coming, but until enough people have been vaccinated, it’s not over. Keep on keeping on with mask wearing, social distancing, and hand sanitizing.

And finally, know where to find help
Reach out to the Student Wellness Advisor, Sharon “Snaggs” Gendron, if you feel you could benefit from additional support. She can refer students struggling with mental health to clinicians who can help. Other places to find help are the Talk One2One Student Assistance Program, BetterHelp, iHope, and the University Chaplaincy.

In the event of a crisis, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1 (800) 273-8255.

References:
[1] Frankl, Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, Boston, 1946.

[2] Conner and Davison. (2003) Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depression and Anxiety 18:76-82.

[3] Friborg et al. (2006) A new rating scale for adult resilience: what are the central protective resources behind healthy adjustment? International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 12(2): 65-76.

[4] Southwick et al. (2005) The psychobiology of depression and resilience to stress: Implications for prevention and treatment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 1:255-91.

[5] Callaghan. (2004) Exercise: A neglected intervention in mental health care? Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 11: 476-483.

[6] Galante et al. (2018) A mindfulness-based intervention to increase resilience to stress in university students (the Mindful Student Study): a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Lancet Public Health 3:372-81.

[7] Grant and Kinman. (2012) Enhancing wellbeing in social work students: building resilience in the next generation. Social Work Education 31(5):605-621.

[8] Bailey and Fernando. (2012) Routine and project-based leisure, happiness, and meaning in life. Journal of Leisure Research 44(2):139-154.

[9] Pat-Horenczyk et al. (2006) Maintaining routine despite ongoing exposure to terrorism: a healthy strategy for adolescents? Journal of Adolescent Health 39:199-205.

[10] Schultz-Krohn. (2004) The meaning of family routines in a homeless shelter. American Journal of Occupational Therapy 58:531-542.

articles, Humans of Tufts Boston, October 2020

Humans of Tufts Boston: Najah Walton, “The power of the mind is not a joke!”

October 15, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

Humans of Tufts Boston, 15 Oct 2020

Najah Walton, Neuroscience, Second-year Ph.D. Student: “The power of the mind is not a joke!”

JH: How did you get started in science and what were you doing before graduate school?

NW: I’ve always had a fascination with science as an extension of trying to learn more about the world around us. In elementary school I spent a lot of time with my grandma who lives in a rural part of Massachusetts and she always encouraged my siblings and me to get outside and appreciate nature. At the time I was a mini-lepidopterist, but when her sister was diagnosed with ALS my interest in the biomedical field became more of my focus.

As a first-generation student I had no idea what “wet lab” was or the prospect of getting a PhD. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to have friends working in research labs that introduced me to bench research as well as science mentors that inspired me to pursue science on a deeper level. One of my friends that was already doing research encouraged me to apply to the U54 Program which was a collaborative summer research training program between UMass Boston, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard Cancer Center. I got to work on a public health outreach project aimed at increasing healthy lifestyle choices in faith-based organizations in the Boston area, as well as increasing the inclusivity of underrepresented individuals in biobanking. By the end of the summer I was captivated by research and wanted to continue pursuing research in conjunction with the clinical work that I was doing as a nursing student. To my benefit, one of the PIs that was on the grant for the summer program, Dr. Tiffany Donaldson, offered me a position working in her Neuroscience lab at UMass, where I started off studying a potential therapy for a birthing complication known as hypoxic ischemic brain injury.

When I graduated from UMass I received my license to practice as an RN but I chose to pursue a neuroscience graduate degree to continue the exciting work that I was doing as a research technician in the Maguire lab at Tufts. Dr. Maguire’s lab is now the lab where I will be working on my thesis and I’m looking forward to using my training to one day treat patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.

JH: What drew you to neuroscience?

NW: “The power of the mind is not a joke!” (Quote from world-renowned philosopher Drake Aubrey Graham.) The brain literally controls every aspect of our beings: how we think, how we move, how we breathe, how we laugh, how we love, how we manage illnesses, and how we help those around us. Seeing how devastating both neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases can be for individuals drew me to want to know more about the brain and how scientists may be able to combat these diseases with their discoveries.

JH: Have you been following any fascinating new scientific developments (in or out of your field)?

NW: In quarantine it’s been hard not to follow the news about the coronavirus vaccine (s/o Dr. Kizzmekia Corbet!). Dr. Corbet has been leading the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center in its push to develop a vaccine for coronavirus. Once the sequence for the virus was published, she and her team moved from vaccine development to a Phase 1 clinical trial…in just 66 days! To say it in plain terms she is a FORCE of nature and a true inspiration for all pursuing science careers.

JH: What do you like to do outside of lab? (This is a great place to plug BSA and I would love love love to link to a website or social media account if you have one!)

NW: Outside of lab I am currently co-president for Tufts Black Student Alliance (follow us on Instagram @tufts_BSA)! The Black Student Alliance was founded serendipitously as myself, Udoka, and several of our board members met by passing each other in the hallways or eating lunch in similar locations in the Biomedical Sciences Building. Udoka and I went to undergrad together and benefitted greatly from the community that was offered at UMass Boston and hoped that the same community could be formed at Tufts to ensure graduate school was just as fruitful. Since Black biomedical graduate students account for less than 10% of the STEM graduate student body it made more sense to create a community that spanned all of the health sciences campus to ensure that all Black students from each of the graduate programs were represented and could have a place of refuge/support during their time at Tufts.

I also host science workshops for youth in the Greater Boston area through Bethel Institute for Social Justice.

JH: Are you taking up any new hobbies during COVID times?

NW: Not necessarily a new hobby but my dogs definitely received a lot more attention in quarantine. We’ve had more time for long walks and they love getting off leash and going for hikes.

Connect with Najah on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/najah-walton/

articles, Humans of Tufts Boston, July 2020

Humans of Tufts Boston: John Ribis, “Think about how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned”

July 12, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

Humans of Tufts Boston, 12 Jul 2020

John Ribis, Microbiology, Rising fourth-year Ph.D. Student: “Think about how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned”

JH: How did you get started in science and what were you doing before graduate school?

JR: I had a circuitous path to grad school, and I came from some very humble beginnings. Both of my siblings are quite a bit older than I am (9 and 11 years), and I remember my sister talking about her high school chemistry class when I was 6 years old. It sounded pretty cool to me, even then. I’ve definitely had interest in science since I was a young child.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, I faced a few challenges throughout my primary education and once I finished high school, I had no real plans to start college. No one else in my immediate family had gone beyond high school, so there wasn’t much pressure or expectation to continue on. After graduating, I got a job working at a local hospital where I worked first bringing food to inpatients and then I worked as an orderly for around 6 years. Being an orderly mostly entailed transporting patients, but we did a number of other things as well; EKGs, responding to violent situations, and providing support during medical emergencies. Twice a day, we would round through the ICU and to assist with various things (helping patients get out of bed, repositioning sedated patients, and sometimes doing chest compressions during codes). I enjoyed asking questions to the nurses and physicians and I got to have a lot of interesting and unforgettable experiences during my time there.

After working at the hospital for a few years, I got motivated to continue my education and started working towards my bachelor’s degree at the suggestion of my girlfriend and some co-workers. I started off by filling in a couple of prerequisites at a local community college over the course of a semester, but I eventually enrolled in classes at the University of Vermont. I did this through a special program that would guarantee admission as an undergraduate as long as you maintained a certain GPA. My high school transcript was dismal to say the least, so I felt very fortunate to have an opportunity like this. I was initially a biology major, but I changed that to microbiology after a year. I toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in medicine, but I was also open to the prospect of a basic science career. I first stepped foot into a research lab in the second semester of my junior year (late I know) and I wasn’t sure what to expect from working in the lab, but I immediately loved it. I was (and still am) very fortunate to have an awesome mentor! I had a ton of fun working in lab learning how to do research, and I spent a ton of time there. I also made friends with a bunch of the grad students and felt like I fit in well with them, so I started seriously considering grad school. I started at Tufts shortly after I graduated.

JH: Looking back, what would you tell someone on a similar path as you about making the decision to go to college and choosing science?

JR: I’d remind them that it’s normal to feel intimidated when making the transition back to school, especially if you had a difficult time previously. It’s also easy to get discouraged at times, feel like you’ve made the wrong decision, and think you’ve wasted a huge amount of money. Make sure to check in with yourself, take a step back and think about how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned. I’d also suggest starting in a lab as early as possible, and if you have a bad time in the first lab, move on and don’t let that shape your view of science. I’ve seen so many people have a bad experience in their first lab, and they decide to never work in a lab again.

JH: What drew you to microbiology?

JR: This goes back to my time in the hospital, where I was able to see firsthand how incredibly destructive some pathogens were. The thought that something so tiny could wreak such havoc on the body amazed me. It was also crazy to me how prevalent antimicrobial resistant organisms were like MRSA and VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococcus). I also got to see a ton of people infected with C. difficile, which is the bug I work on now. In addition to pathogens, I thought the fact that we have co-evolved with a huge number of commensal bacteria, which we rely on for what seems like everything, was fascinating as well. It’s pretty wild that the gut microbiota has an impact on pretty much everything, including our brain since some bugs actually produce neurotransmitters that probably impact our mood and behavior. They also protect us from other bacteria that can cause really severe disease. For example, the bacterium I study only makes people sick when gut commensals get wiped out.

JH: Have you been following any fascinating new scientific developments?

JR: Well, if you ask anyone that knows me, they will tell you that I have a slight, maybe unhealthy, obsession with microscopy. It’s the main thing that I’ve missed about being away from the lab. Fun fact: I’m color blind, so my love for microscopy often causes a lot of confusion amongst my peers! I then tell them that GFP doesn’t have to be green and mCherry doesn’t have to be red.

Microscopy pretty much dominates my twitter feed. It’s a hugely innovative field and it’s hard to pick a single fascinating development. I am a bit of a sucker for any super-resolution technique, so the fact that we can now use light microscopy to see single fluorophores and separate them within a couple nanometers of each other in living cells just blows my mind.

On the image analysis side, things seem to be developing even faster. Machine learning/deep learning is making image processing and analysis insanely fast, more accurate, and super high-throughput. There’s a huge open source community that is constantly developing new tools.

If you want to learn the basics, I’d definitely recommend the iBiology microscopy videos on YouTube, the Microcourses YouTube channel, the Nikon Microscopy U website, and the book Fundamentals of Light Microscopy and Electronic Imaging is fantastic. If you’re in a lab that will pay for you to go to a short course, do it. It’s exhausting, but you truly get immersed in everything related to microscopy.

Also, follow microscopy people on twitter.

JH: What do you like to do outside of lab?

JR: Outside the lab I enjoy running, staring at things in museums, spending time with my dog Lucy and my girlfriend, enjoying craft beer, and more recently brewing beer completely from scratch; grain to glass. I also like travelling to cool places when possible and was lucky to do a pre-pandemic trip to Spain and Portugal. I’m also a big fan of horror movies. I definitely recommend The Witch, Hereditary, and Midsommar. They are all fantastic. Like Ramesh, who was previously featured, I keep a planted aquarium as well.

JH: What does that grain to glass process look like?

JR: You steep malted barley (and other grains sometimes) in heated water. You have to control the temperature and pH to activate enzymes in the malted barley to convert starch into simpler sugars for the yeast to eat. Once that’s, done, you boil the wort (unfermented beer), add hops, cool it down, and then add yeast. While its fermenting might have to dry hop, add fruit, coffee or other things. After its fermented you bottle it or keg it to carbonate. Bottles take longer because you have to get a little fermentation started again to generate the CO2 to carbonate the beer. It all can take anywhere from a couple weeks to months (sometimes years) to finish a beer depending on the style!

articles, Book Reviews, June 2020

Racist Science: Books on How We Got Here

June 26, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

When I originally began writing this – my next article for the Insight – it was going to be about things to read during a pandemic. George Floyd hadn’t been murdered yet. Protests hadn’t begun. And originally, I was going to put an extra section at the beginning of my article on racism in science and medicine.

That’s not enough; this topic really needs its own article and more. Speaking here as a white person, I can’t stress enough how critical it is for people like me to self-educate and do some thorough self-examination, and this article meant to be a point from which people can start.

Racism is endemic in our society, and it’s endemic in our sciences. It’s something that the scientific community has passively accepted and ignored for years, and it’s high past time to end that. If you’re new to this, welcome! Reading about racism is a great way to open your mind and determine where your own biases lie. It’s also a great way to keep yourself moving and thinking if you feel you’ve hit a standstill in your progress on this important and evolving topic. Identifying and uprooting biases and racism is a continuous learning process, one that I’m committed to being better at.

The title of each book on this list is linked to The Frugal Bookstore, Boston’s only Black-owned independent bookstore, where possible. Please join me in picking one (or more!) to read, and let’s start educating ourselves and doing better!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

The scientist that obtained Henrietta’s cells did so without her consent. More than 20 years after her death in 1951, her family finally learned the truth: that scientists had been using her cells for years, that people had made a lot of money from discoveries using those cells, and that they themselves never saw any of the profits.

Most students in the biological sciences are familiar with HeLa cells. Here, Skloot presents the reader with the story of Henrietta Lacks herself, as well as the results of race exploitation in scientific discovery. If you have a few hours to spare, check out the 2017 movie adaptation, featuring Renée Elise Goldsberry (of Hamilton fame) as Henrietta Lacks and Oprah Winfrey as Deborah Lacks.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Harriet A. Washington)

The story of Henrietta Lacks is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the history of exploiting African Americans for medical and scientific progress. It starts long before that, at least as far back as the 17^th century. Medical Apartheid presents the first comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans.

This is going to be an uncomfortable book to read. What we now think of as racism in the medical system – racial disparities in access to health care, morbidity, and mortality rates – began with horrific and nonconsensual experiments (a quick Google search on James Marion Sims, the so-called “father of modern gynecology” should do the trick, for anyone curious). And while we have made much progress in that regard, there is so much more left to be done.

Already read this one? Check out one of Washington’s other books on the intersection of race and medicine: A Terrible Thing to Waste details environmental racism and its contribution to racial disparities in disease.

Superior: The Return of Race Science (Angela Saini)

For many white people, the story of overt racism in science may end with the end of World War II and the Holocaust, when people realized the consequences (putting it quite lightly) of the mass implementation of eugenics. But science did not truly let go of racism. Society hadn’t (and still hasn’t) abandoned the idea. It just took on an even more insidious nature.

Superior covers racism throughout known history. It is a book exposing the way scientists cling to an idea of race as a biological truth, as something that is encoded in our genes. This is a book that reveals the propensity of science to look for genetic differences in races as a convenient way of explaining away a difference in disease risk, poverty, and other things, when so much more goes into an individual than genetics.

The Mismeasure of Man (Stephen Jay Gould)

And there is much more to an individual than genetics. Published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man systematically dismantles the idea that differences between groups of people (such as races) comes from genetics, a malpractice often referred to as biological determinism.

While Gould received great reviews in the popular press, the scientific community gave him the cold shoulder with claims of historical inaccuracy and political bias.

We all have a lot of work ahead of us to successfully strip our communities of racism. The above works touch only on the highly visible aspects of racism in science; microaggressions and other vastly overlooked racist practices are yet another area in which the sciences need to get a whole lot smarter. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it does need to happen. If you’re looking for more resources, please consult this #STEMforBLM Resource List. It contains more books on racism in science, as well as links to general resource lists (which contain titles like How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, White Fragility by Robin J. Diangelo, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates).

Books may not be everyone’s speed, but there are plenty of podcasts to check out if that’s more your style. There are two episodes of NPR’s Short Wave, a podcast on the science behind various news headlines, that might be particularly interesting. “Coronavirus and Racism are Dual Public Health Emergencies” details how systemic racism causes health disparities, such as during the Coronavirus pandemic. In “Science Is for Everyone – Until It’s Not” Brandon Taylor tells his heartbreaking story of why he had to leave science – because of how his fellow scientists treated him, as a Black person.

Which book will you be reading? Have you read any of these, and if so, what did you think?

articles, Humans of Tufts Boston, May 2020

Humans of Tufts Boston: Ramesh Govindan, “Our ingenuity will pull us through”

May 7, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

Humans of Tufts Boston, 7 May 2020

Ramesh Govindan, CMDB, Fourth-year Ph.D. Student (Sixth-year M.D./Ph.D.): “Our ingenuity will pull us through”

JH: How did you get started in science and what were you doing before medical/graduate school?

RG: I always had an interest in science, although I had a brief stint in college where I wanted to be a history major (my parents were terrified). I went to college thinking that I wanted to become a biomedical engineer, because my big interests at that time were in tissue engineering. Growing synthetic organs for transplantation seemed like the coolest thing on Earth (and it might be), and I wanted to be the guy to make it a reality. As I learned more biology and physiology as part of my major coursework, as well as a lot of the humanities courses I was required to take, I also became a lot more interested in the human elements of disease and medicine. So, on top of working in a biomedical engineering lab, I started volunteering at a local hospital in a Medical Specialties ward, through a program where we would visit patients who had been, or were anticipated to be, on the ward for a long time (weeks, months). I’d spend a few days a week there for a couple of hours at a time going on walks, playing board games, and chatting with the patients. I got to know a few people pretty well, including a particularly memorable guy who had poorly-controlled schizophrenia and type I diabetes, the combination of which prevented him from being discharged on his own. By the time I hit senior year, I was pretty confused as to what I wanted to do – science or medicine. I ended up taking a gap year at the NIH in a basic science cancer research lab, where we studied the mitotic kinetochore, a protein-chromatin-microtubule complex that forms during metaphase to regulate chromosome segregation. I had two projects there, first looking for substrates of Aurora B kinase, which orchestrates numerous processes in the kinetochore. The second was to study the role of a specific histone methylation (H3.3S31me) in mitosis. Our model system was Xenopus laevis frog eggs, which are highly mitotic and are great for immunoprecipitation. I applied to MD/PhD programs during that time.

JH: Why did you choose to do an MD/PhD?

RG: People ask this of MD/PhD students a lot, and I’m not sure if it’s out of a concern that we’re all secretly insane, or whether they actually think there’s some hidden driving motivation behind each person’s choice. I’ve come to realize over the years that I really don’t have a single reason why I chose this. There are a lot of small reasons, though. The first, probably, is that I was really torn between two professions. I enjoy science and the lab, but I also like helping people directly, with my own hands. To find out at the age of 20 that there was a career path that would allow me to do both of those things, even if it was only in theory, was something I had to jump at. The second reason I chose this is maybe more nebulous – I didn’t really see the downside. It was a challenge that only a relative few chose, and it opened up potential without closing any doors. In my mind, the regret of not having tried to do both would far outweigh the regret of having tried and failed. So I applied, then I got in, and, six years later, I’m still doing it. And yes, I still have two more years of medical school, five-ish years of residency, and then one or two more years of a fellowship, but I take it one step at a time and so far I’m really enjoying it!

The third reason was that medical school is free.

Waiting in line at the 2018 Extreme Beer Festival

JH: What drew you to microbiology for your thesis research?

RG: My interest in microbiology was not a deciding factor in any choice I’ve ever made. I’m not sure I even knew what a virus was before John Coffin and Katya Heldwein told me about them during lectures in my first year of medical school. And even then, I only wrote down enough information to pass whatever exam I had coming up. I didn’t realize that viruses would become such a big part of my life until I decided to join James Munro’s lab, and I only really joined because I liked his mentoring style and pew-pew lasers. But in the last four years, I’ve come to realize that viruses are maybe some of the coolest biological phenomena on the planet. They’re the only known replicating pathogen that is, by most definitions of “life”, dead. They’re nature’s freak killer robots. From a structural biology perspective, they are macromolecular machines perfected by evolution with only the goal of efficiency. They’re insanely amazing as research and therapeutic tools, and equally terrifying as agents of human disease. So I’m pleasantly surprised to have found virology as a PhD student, and I’m hoping to maintain a level of engagement with it as I move on my career.

Setting up a new hot pepper garden at Ramesh’s parents’ house in central MA

JH: Obviously COVID-19 has been getting a lot of press lately. As a future doctor, what do you think? Are there any questions that aren’t being asked that should be?

RG: These are truly terrifying times. The looming specter of COVID-19 has, I think, become a defining challenge for society. As a virologist-in-training, I hope that this pandemic helps us re-evaluate the ways in which we interact with the ecosystem and each other, and, as a doctor-in-training, I hope that we find new ways to organize ourselves to respond to emerging viral pandemics. The gut-wrenching part of this is that this entire pandemic, on nearly every level, is a product of human activity. From the encroachment of humans on untouched wilderness, to our inability to deal with global poverty, to our complacency in letting free market forces dictate the makeup of our healthcare systems, simultaneously all of us and none of us are to blame for this. For instance, while the lack of infectious disease (ID) doctors in this country isn’t specifically anybody’s fault, experts have been pointing out this shortage for decades. A root of the problem is that training in ID is financially devastating – you pay ~60k a year through medical school, then slog through a low-paying internal medicine residency, and then train for 2-3 years as a fellow in ID. As an ID doc, you make less than you would have if you had just stayed in internal medicine – you take a pay cut to get more training. Your salary as a doctor is tied to how much you can bill insurance, and if you don’t do any surgeries or procedures (like an ID doc), you bill less, and you make less. It’s ridiculous. We were able to fight HIV in the ’80s and ’90s because at that time, there were many more ID doctors in the country. Today, we’re out-gunned.

So, this has been a classic conversation with Ramesh where it gets really dark once he gets going. But it’s not all bad. I am, surprisingly, still an optimist, and I really do believe that our ingenuity will pull us through. Vaccine trials are already underway, and drugs like remdesivir are showing some promise. But we need to keep up our momentum once this pandemic is over, and rethink our preparedness for viral pandemics, because SARS-CoV-2 is just one of many pathogens to come.

Ramesh’s fish tank with Saruman, the betta fish

JH: What do you like to do outside of lab?

RG: Foremost, seeing my friends is my favorite thing to do. The friends I’ve made at Tufts have helped me in more ways than I can describe. Even if I somehow failed out of two doctorate programs, I know I’ll walk away with some of the best friendships I’ve ever had. If you’re asking after hobbies, then I think an easier question would be, ‘What doesn’t Ramesh like to do outside of lab?’ I think most people who know me know of my strange obsession with The Lord of the Rings, the greatest story ever told. More recently, I finished another fantasy series, the Wheel of Time, via audiobook on my drives out to UMass and my lonely nights in lab. I can’t recommend that series enough. During the final book (50-ish hours long) I had to periodically look up to the ceiling to let the tears drain back into my sinuses so that they wouldn’t splash into my ELISA plate. This was besides the tears I normally shed in lab. I also really enjoy gardening. I worked eighteen years a slave in my family’s yard, and then left home to realize that I actually enjoyed it the whole time, so besides heading home to work my parents’ garden I also have a small yard in Cambridge that I’ve been working on. Hand-in-hand with gardening, I’ve started keeping a freshwater fish tank with real plants that’s been pretty fun to maintain, especially in the winter when there’s no gardening to be done outside. I also enjoy cooking – I use the guides on Serious Eats and America’s Test Kitchen to try out new things when I can. It seems like during this pandemic there’s been a huge explosion of cooking on the internet, and I’m really enjoying that. I also can’t wait till summer rolls around so I can start smoking meats again. I generally think that people of our generation need more hobbies that are not Netflix, and I’m very grateful to have found hobbies that I enjoy and can share with my friends.

April 2020, articles, Humans of Tufts Boston

Humans of Tufts Boston: Logan Schwartz, “I am interested in helping an aging population”

April 9, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

Humans of Tufts Boston, 9 Apr 2020

Logan Schwartz, Genetics (JAX), Second-year Ph.D. “I am interested in helping an aging population”

JH: Thank you so much for agreeing to answer some questions! What were you doing before graduate school?

LS: I started my scientific career as a summer intern at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for three summers right after high school and through college. I worked in the VelociGene Department aimed at developing genetically modified mammalian models of gene function and disease! I attended the University of Rochester and studied Molecular Genetics and Chemistry. After completing undergrad, I was working for Dana Farber Cancer Institute and MGH as a research technician studying the functional genetics and molecular mechanisms of chronic lymphocytic leukemia and cystic fibrosis.

JH: What drew you to the JAX program?

LS: I was drawn to the JAX program by the opportunity to work with Dr. Jennifer Trowbridge and the novel mouse models for studying clonal hematopoiesis (CH). The Genetics program at JAX is a unique graduate program with the freedom to take courses at The Jackson Laboratory in topics ranging from systems genetics to different computational languages. I really enjoy the close and collaborative community at JAX and I am happy to be a part of it!

Dr. Trowbridge is a leader in the field of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) research and she is fearless with respect to developing and employing the new and best techniques to address scientific questions. She is an inspiring investigator to be mentored by, having navigated herself the challenges of achieving success as a woman in science.

I am particularly excited to work in this field of research because I am interested in helping an aging population. With the growing population of elderly individuals worldwide, preventative strategies to reduce aging-associated diseases are urgently needed. We acquire somatic mutations in our HSCs as we age, some of which can confer a competitive advantage and cause clonal HSC expansion, known as clonal hematopoiesis (CH). This is present in 10-15% of individuals aged 70 years or older. My thesis work in the Trowbridge lab strives to identify novel mechanisms that can be used as interventions to prevent aging-associated diseases and disorders of the hematopoietic system, with a specific focus on HSCs, which are responsible for the lifelong maintenance of a functional hematopoietic system.

Riding a camel with Rebecca Brown (Genetics program) in Israel

JH: Is there anything you think is under-appreciated in the field of genetics?

LS: Genetic Diversity! Many diseases are studied by using models on a single genetic background when no two humans with the same disease are genetically identical. My lab is using genetically diverse mice to determine if inherited genetic variants increase the likelihood of developing CH and that there are population differences in clonal advantages gained by specific mutations in particular genetic and environmental contexts. CH is most commonly driven by somatic mutations in the gene encoding DNA methyltransferase (DNMT3A), so we are testing the hypothesize that variation in genetic background dictates whether DNMT3A-mutant HSCs acquire a selective advantage. The work is still in progress so we will have to wait and see!

JH: What do you like to do outside of lab?

LS: Outside of the lab, I enjoy hiking/exploring Acadia national park, running, painting and trivia nights, and taking care of my fifty house plants! A couple of years ago, my friend gave me my first house plant, a snake plant. He told me they were impossible to kill, and somehow I still managed to kill it. I decided to try again, and somehow I was able to keep it alive. After that, it has become a sort of obsession, although I still kill succulents from time to time. The thing I love most about having plants is how much life they can bring into your home. I also love watching them grow and change over time!

April 2020, articles, Techniques

How Do You Figure?: Graphic Design Software For Scientists

April 2, 2020 Judith M. Hollander 3 Comments

As I sit at home writing what will (hopefully) be my very first first-author manuscript, I began to wonder how scientists go about making their figures for a paper. Like many things in academia, it was probably going to be lab-specific: someone would have started using a particular software, taught the next graduate student how to use it before they left, and that student would teach the next. And so on, and so forth.

With this in mind, I took to Twitter to ask students (and @AcademicChatter), how, exactly, were they figuring?

BioRender (@vanesque89, @Nicole_Paulk)

Price: Free for personal/educational (limited) use, various paid plans
Platform: Web-based

Think of BioRender as your scientific clip-art library. BioRender has a collection of over 20,000 different icons covering more than 30 fields of the life sciences. The colors of each icon can be customized, and the drag-and-drop functionality makes figure creation very quick. Even better, there’s nothing to download! It’s right there in your browser, ready whenever and wherever you are working.

CorelDraw (@AdemaRibic)

Price: $249/year or $499 (one-time purchase)*
Platform: Windows, Mac

Originating in Ottawa, Canada, CorelDRAW touts vector illustration, layout, photo editing, and typography tools. It works on both Windows and MacOS.

*Editor’s note: Corel Education Edition is a one-time payment of $109 (thanks to Adema Ribić for this correction!)

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (@Nicole_Paulk)

Price: $20/month for the first year, $30/month after that (student pricing, includes all Adobe apps)
Platform: Windows, Mac, some apps available for iOS and Android

Almost everyone is familiar, at this point, with Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe’s suite of software for designing things (literally, any and all of the things). Photoshop is useful for raw images (such as overlaying fluorescent images and stitching together microscope images). Illustrator, in contrast, is for creating vector art and illustrations, but it’s also useful for aligning the different panels for a cohesive figure. The most updated version of Illustrator seems to have kept this in mind: the Adobe website specifically mentions its use in making infographics, including the ability to edit data through a charts function.

GraphPad Prism
Price: $108/year (student pricing)
Platform: Windows, Mac

Prism is less for making figures and more for making graphs, but it’s worth mentioning here since many of us include graphs in our figures. In Prism 8, you can draw lines or brackets on graphs to indicate significance. A centered text box is automatically included for your asterisks! These graphs can be exported as images and then arranged easily in another application as panels of a figure.

Affinity Photo and Designer (@SimonWad)
Price: $50 per app, one-time purchase
Platform: Windows, Mac, iPad

These are popular alternatives to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. One of the major complaints about Adobe was its movement to a cloud-based subscription model. Affinity uses a one-time purchase model, and is also considerably more affordable. The company also has an alternative to Adobe InDesign (called Publisher).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the possible software you could use to make a figure. Many people swear by PowerPoint as their favorite way of assembling figures. Here are a few other pieces of software to check out that are free to all:

Gimp
Price: Free!
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

Gimp is a high-quality raster image editor. Think of this as the free version of Photoshop. It can do a lot of the same things, but it’s missing some of the advanced tools, such as using adjustment layers to non-destructively edit images.

Inkscape
Price: Free!
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor with shapes, layers, text on paths, and the ability to align and distribute objects. If you’re looking for something like Illustrator to handle vector graphics but don’t want to shell out the money, this is a great option!

Scribus
Price: Free!
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

Scribus is an open-source alternative to Adobe InDesign. It has many of the same features as InDesign, but unfortunately can’t open InDesign files.

Thank you to everyone who responded, and happy figuring!

Cover image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay

Sources:
biorender.com
coreldraw.com
adobe.com/products/photoshop.html
adobe.com/products/illustrator.html
graphpad.com
affinity.serif.com
products.office.com
gimp.org
digitaltrends.com/photography/gimp-vs-photoshop/
inkscape.org
scribus.net

articles, Humans of Tufts Boston, March 2020

Humans of Tufts Boston: Noell Cho, “Representation Can Have a Broader Impact”

March 12, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

Humans of Tufts Boston, 12 Mar 2020

Noell Cho, Neuroscience, Second-year Ph.D. “Representation Can Have a Broader Impact”

JH: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer some questions! How did you get your start in science?

NC: My start in science harkens back to my high school on the island of Guam, when I volunteered to work at its endangered species lab under the direction of our AP Bio teacher Dr. Hauhouot Diambra-Odi. For decades, invasive species have completely destroyed Guam’s ecosystems. Of particular interest to our group was the introduced Philippine collard dove, which is threatened by the invasive Brown tree snakes. In the lab we designed experiments to learn more about existing bird migration patterns and behaviors. We delved into “field work,” which involved several camping trips on an uninhabited islet called Alupat island (approximately 200 meters off the western coast of Guam). We eventually presented the data at the International Student Science Fair in Kyoto, Japan. Unfortunately, some of Guam’s endemic bird populations, such as the Guam rail are deemed extinct in the wild and extirpated from the island. I was surprised to find that the New England Aquarium had these birds, a little piece of home right in Boston!

Cetti Bay in the southern region of Guam

JH: What drew you to neuroscience?

NC: I worked as a tech in several different labs and research areas, including cancer biology, immunology, and translational neuroscience. I worked in Clive Svendsen’s lab at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where I became involved in stem-cell transplantation studies in animal models of neurodegeneration, specifically the SOD1G93A rat model of ALS. I was fascinated that a neurodegenerative disease phenotype was able to be recapitulated in rodents harboring a mutated human ALS gene. Through these studies, I joined Gretchen Thomsen’s lab, whose particular focus was studying the link between repetitive TBI and ALS. My previous experience in immunology research motivated my investigation of selective inflammatory responses related to TBI-induced neurodegeneration. I fully credit working in the Thomsen lab as where I discovered my passion for neuroscience research.

The Thomsen lab at Cedars-Sinai. From left to right: Gretchen Thomsen (PI), Mor Alkaslasi, Patricia Haro-Lopez, Noell Cho

JH: What is your favorite technique that you use in lab?

NC: I’ve become an apprentice of electrophysiology since I joined the Moss laboratory here at Tufts. Tarek Deeb has been profound in imparting his knowledge of ephys and its many applications for neuroscience research. It’s intriguing to use the patch-clamp technique to measure the electrical properties and functional activity of neurons. My research experience has been primarily focused on looking at biochemical changes in neurological disease, so it has been refreshing to learn a new technique and observe electrophysiological changes in the brain. I remember that first moment, not too long ago actually, when I patched onto hippocampal neurons in mouse slices and observing action potential firing patterns. Seeing those spikes is so satisfying!

Members of the Moss lab representing at Relays

JH: Have you been following any fascinating new scientific developments or controversies?

NC: More recently, I’m trying to stay updated on new ephys systems in vivo and ex vivo. There are so many cool videos and photos that pop up on my feed of some of the most insane multipatch ephys rigs. Ed Boyden’s group has made tremendous advances in automated in vivo multipatch recordings. Automated multipatch rigs not only allow for ease of recording multiple neurons simultaneously, but also provide large-scale mapping of brain circuits. Multipatch clamp recordings also reveal more about connectivity between specific cell types in the brain, and automation provides a huge advantage in terms of time and feasibility. It’s always exciting to see the latest innovations that come out from the Boyden lab, but also it seems that robots are an inevitable part of scientific developments.

Noell presenting her repetitive TBI model at her first SFN!

JH: What do you do outside of lab?

NC: Because I’m a Boston transplant from Los Angeles, it was important to me to foster an environment at school that would feel like home. Thankfully, student organizations such as GWiSE and SPINES provided just that. Currently, I am the GWiSE secretary and operate media and communications for our group. As a first-year, I enjoyed the GWiSE coffee & conversations events that feature a woman in STEM and learning of their school and career experiences. I am so thankful for my former PI, mentor and friend, Gretchen Thomsen, who believed in me and is one of the reasons why I am in grad school today. I definitely benefit from the efforts of GWiSE and SPINES that provide programming surrounding diversity and inclusion, because ultimately representation can have a broader impact. You can follow GWiSE and SPINES on Twitter (@TuftsGwise and @TuftsSPINES)!

Checking out the East Coast surf in Montauk, NY

articles, February 2020, Humans of Tufts Boston

Humans of Tufts Boston: Uri Bulow, “Archaea Don’t Get Enough Love”

February 13, 2020 Judith M. Hollander Leave a comment

Humans of Tufts Boston, 13 February 2020

Uri Bulow, Microbiology, Third-year Ph.D. Student (Fifth-year M.D./Ph.D.): “Archaea Don’t Get Enough Love”

JH: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer some questions! So what were you doing before graduate school?

UB: I worked as a tech in a lab in Boulder for two years after finishing my degree in molecular biology. I was in a molecular cardiology lab, but I ended up working on a transduction system and found out that I enjoyed thinking about viruses more than myosin. I also loved the microbiology classes I took (thank you, Norman Pace and Shelley Copley), so when I came to Tufts I decided to join the microbiology department. Now I work on Lassa virus, which is a hemorrhagic fever virus. Hemorrhagic fever viruses (like Lassa or Ebola) are characterized by high fevers, multi-system organ failure, and hemorrhaging from mucous membranes (though this is less common than the name would suggest). I really enjoy being able to study such a simple and elegant system. Lassa only has 4 genes, any organism with more than that is just showing off!

JH: Getting an MD/PhD requires a great deal of dedication and time. Why did you go for an MD/PhD, and did you decide you wanted to go into medicine or science first?

UB: I always knew I wanted to be a scientist, and I figured that if a PhD takes 6 years and an MD/PhD takes 8, I might as well throw in the free MD since it would be interesting and it’s only an additional 2 years. At the time I didn’t really know what residency was, or that MD training doesn’t end when you graduate. Oops. Since starting this program I’ve discovered that I actually enjoy medicine, and making a career of both science and medicine sounds pretty ideal to me.

JH: Are there any major controversies in your field right now? What are they, and what are your thoughts?

UB: I know that this doesn’t need to be said to any GSBS students, but people need to get over this antivaxxer nonsense that’s threatening the health of our country. Vaccines are arguably the single greatest healthcare achievement we have ever made as a species, and watching them get dismissed by parents who would rather use essential oils and spells to ward off evil spirits is incredibly frustrating. The CDC actually estimates that 2.5 million lives are saved every year due to vaccination.*

JH: Is there anything you think is under-appreciated in microbiology (or medicine, if you prefer) as a whole?

UB: I think that archaea don’t get enough love. They’re a whole separate domain of life, comparable to bacteria or eukaryotes, and we know so little about those adorable little weirdos. Did you know that their plasma membranes aren’t bilayers, and that they use ether-linked lipids instead of ester-linked lipids? They live in every known biome on Earth, even inside our own GI tract, yet we know so little about them. What are they up to?

JH: What do you like to do outside of lab?

UB: Lately I’ve been really enjoying the Berklee student concerts. They’re super cheap and those kids are super talented. Shout-out to Mike Thorsen for introducing me to them. My favorite thing to do is to experiment in the kitchen. I recently dry-aged a beef striploin for 90 days, made my own lox, smoked some cheese, and I’m currently making pineapple vinegar. I also really enjoy marathoning the Lord of the Rings with friends, photoshopping my PI’s face into funny pictures, growing super-hot peppers, and canceling plans so I can stay home and read.

*Uri kindly provided this further evidence for the benefits of vaccines from an economic standpoint: “A recent economic analysis of 10 vaccines for 94 low- and middle-income countries estimated that an investment of $34 billion for the immunization programs resulted in savings of $586 billion in reducing costs of illness and $1.53 trillion when broader economic benefits were included.” Orenstein and Ahmed. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Apr 18. 114(16):4031-4033.