ENHS Nature Trails November 2003 Article 1

This month's speaker: Dr. Karen Guillemin

The front cover depicts the bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, enlarged 10,000x with computer enhancement. H.p. and his companions behave in a benign manner most of the time, but once in awhile they get out of hand. Dr. Karen Guillemin, this month's speaker, currently studies, the Helicobacter pylori bacteria, a "gastric resident" of over half of the world's population. Karen writes that H.p. can become a "serious pathogen" sometimes simply creating gastritis or peptic ulcers, but at other times becoming a carcinogen. She and her colleagues would "like to understand the molecular nature of the bacterial-host dialogue that determines disease outcome."

This interest in research for Karen goes back to her formative years when she says, "I was fascinated by marine life, which I got to explore during summers in Truro, Cape Cod." She goes on to tell a little about her family life but mostly about her own pursuit of her interest in biology:

My father is a mathematician and always spoke wistfully about his classmates who went into biology just as the structure of DNA was being elucidated and got to make many exciting discoveries in the new field of molecular biology. His reflections helped influence my direction.

Guido Guidotti was a professor at Harvard, where I was an undergraduate, who allowed me to join his lab after sophomore year, without any previous lab experience, and gave me my own independent project. It was through my experience working in his lab for the next three years that I came to understand and appreciate the culture of research science which was radically different from the exposure I had to science in the classroom, where everything was cut and dry.

Based on my undergraduate research experience in the biochemistry of membrane proteins, I applied to biochemistry departments for graduate school. When I arrived at Stanford, One of the biochemistry faculty, Mark Krasnow, had just embarked on a project in developmental biology, studying the development of the respiratory organ of the fruit fly. I thought this sounded fascinating and joined his lab. During my graduate career I found one of the most interesting aspects of the problem that the development of the organ was not completely hardwired but was influenced by the environment. For example, at low oxygen tensions the organ expanded to accommodate the body's increased demand. When choosing my postdoctoral project I wanted to study how developmental programs are modulated by the environment and I became interested in how bacteria influence animals' development. I realized that some of the best research on bacterial-animal interactions was being done in studying bacterial pathogenesis, so this is the area I trained in. I focused on a bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, which spans the spectrum between benign and pathogenic. Since coming to the University of Oregon, I've initiated a second research project on the role of the normal microflora in zebrafish development.

Dr. Guillemin did her undergraduate work at Harvard and received her PhD from Stanford. She came to Eugene when both she and her husband were offered positions as assistant professors in Biology and invited to be members of the Institute of Molecular Biology.

She's received numerous awards and honors, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in Biomedical Sciences and the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant.

WHAT WILL WE HEAR ABOUT FRIDAY NIGHT? I am going to talk about the ways in which bacteria colonize animals both in pathogenic relationships, causing disease, and in beneficial relationships, promoting normal health and even directing proper developmental programs.

DR. GUILLEMIN'S ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM MEANS WE'RE IN FOR A GREAT TALK ON A VITAL TOPIC.
 

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