The Story
My tryst with the Drosophila, or fruit fly, began in the summer of 2012, within the confines of Dr. Seung Kim’s Laboratory at the Stanford University School of Medicine (where I have spent the past two summers as a research intern). This website, and my blog (drosophilandi.tumblr.com) are an attempt to capture my exciting journey as I strive to glean important lessons in medical and biological research.
Drosophila Melanogaster - this mighty specimen is a tiny insect used by researchers world over (and geneticists in particular) as a model organism for the study of human cells and genes. Dr. Kim’s lab works mainly with Drosophila in efforts to restore and regenerate pancreatic islets of Langerhans- endocrine organs that secrete hormones central to many signaling pathways. Beta-cells, one of the five different types of cells found in these islets, are responsible for producing insulin, a hormone that is key to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism by taking up glucose from the blood. Deficient beta-cells which are unable to produce insulin cause diseases such as diabetes; Studying these islets and their development will elucidate new information about restoring insulin-producing functions to the pancreas.
Dr. Kim’s group works specifically with endocrine cells in Drosophila known as IPC’s (insulin-producing cells). The lab has identified ways to purify certain cells responsible for creating islets, which have helped illuminate new pathways that control beta-cell growth in islet tumors- pathways that could be modified to restore functional islets. Since IPC’s in Drosophila are functional orthologs of mammalian islet cells, knowledge of these pathways and their role in expansion can be applied to the treatment of human diseases such as diabetes and neuroendocrine cancer. For more details on Dr. Kim and his team’s research, please visit http://seungkimlab.stanford.edu/.
My fortuitous meeting with Dr. Kim occurred in the summer of 2011, when I attended a medical lecture series program at Stanford. Dr. PJ Utz, the head of the program, introduced me to Dr. Kim upon learning that I attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Dr. Kim’s alma mater. As I learnt more of Dr. Kim’s area of work and research, I became increasingly fascinated! Almost on a whim, I invited him to speak about his work at Exeter’s school assembly. Our assemblies, which run for about an hour on Tuesday and Friday mornings, have traditionally showcased speakers from a myriad of departments and professions, ranging from Bill McKibben, a world-famous environmental activist, to Katie Bayne, the CEO of Coca-Cola, and Judd Gregg, a US Senator and former Governor of New Hampshire. It is considered a great honor to present at assembly both due to the history of impressive speakers, and also because the entire Exeter student body, as well as many teachers, attend each assembly.
After addressing a packed assembly hall, Dr. Kim met with students and toured the campus (which was once his own home). During the course of his visit to the Biology department, an interesting turn of events unfolded - as he elaborated his research interests to Exeter Biology teachers, Dr. Kim expressed a keen desire to re-connect with the Exeter community in some way. After some discussions, a plan arose to introduce an innovative course at Exeter where select students could participate in a term-long research project based on Dr. Kim’s lab’s work at Stanford. As a precursor to this to-be-introduced course, 2 students from Exeter would be invited to conduct summer research in the lab. Needless to say, I was delighted to be one of the two.
Over March break, two of Exeter’s biology teachers, Mr. Townley Chisholm and Ms. Anne Rankin, visited Stanford, and I joined them while some members of the lab explained the basis of their research, and showed us how to dissect and analyze fruit flies under the microscope. The experience, though brief, was quite exciting, and only a few weeks after, the course material was finalized and a group of 12 students was chosen to participate in its very first term the following Spring.
Emma Herold, the second student summer intern, and I, spent about 12 weeks in the lab during the summer of 2012, helping to create novel strains of Drosophila with a specific gene sequence (the LexA enhancer trap) that the class would work with in the Spring. The goal of my first summer of research, apart from creating the transgenic flies, was to learn more about how to control the LexA sequence, and how to engineer it to perform certain functions in fruit flies, put simply. My time in the lab was amazing. In the first two weeks alone, I was inundated with so many fascinating new concepts, and learnt so much about fruit fly genetics; it felt as if I was standing straight in front of a fire hose!
After maintaining the fly stocks we had created throughout the Fall and Winter of the next school year, the time for the first run of the new experimental genetics course- termed "BIO470: Genetics Research"- finally arrived. During Exeter's 12-week spring term, eleven students and I, along with Mr. Chisholm and Ms. Rankin, worked through the various Drosophila crosses outlined for us in our course manual, and generated multiple lines of Drosophila with unique insertions of our transposable element ( Genetics tab of the site contain details on each of the genetic terms used). Because of the experience and knowledge we had gained over the summer, Emma and I served as teaching assistants for the class. As a group, we mastered the art of making our own fly pushing tools, struggled with (and eventually conquered!) complex genetics problems that helped elucidate the ingenious specifics of the fly genome, and cherished those rare moments when we stumbled upon the elusive virgin female fly with the perfect genotype. Though we were not able to forge as far into process of documenting all the novel insertion sites as we had initially hoped to, the course was a great success. The overarching goal of introducing high school students to real-world genetics research, and exposing them to the trials and victories of serious lab work had been more than fulfilled. Not only did each and every student in the first run of the course thoroughly enjoy the experience, the course became one of the most popular offerings the following year after only a couple weeks of spring term had passed!
The overwhelming support and interest in continuing the "StanEx" project, as it came to be called, has brought me back to Dr. Kim's lab this summer, the summer of 2013. Along with Elle MacAlpine, a student from BIO470, I am spending these next twelve weeks completing the genetic characterization of the flies we created in the Spring, and preparing for next Spring, when BIO470 will run once more. As part of my senior project, I will be teaching the class along with Mr. Chisholm and Ms. Rankin. Though I am a little sad I won't be able to take the course again, I am eager to share my knowledge with other Exonians, and watch them realize, as I have over the past two years, what a extraordinary specimen the Drosophila truly is.
Through the winter and the spring, I will also be working on an independent research project that involves performing a casette exchange in one of the fly strains we created in the spring. I will post more about the project either in my blog or on the site as I begin my work.