Duke Research: Creating Knowledge. Serving Society

Discuss This (One Response)

Doing research with a faculty member as an undergraduate was not on Lesley Chapman’s to-do list when she arrived at Duke from rural Clinton, N.C.

Her high school knowledge of DNA had been limited to the molecule’s double-helix structure. “The only thing I knew about genomics was what we were told on the news,” she said.

But within a year, Chapman was exploring a possible genetic mechanism to control malaria in the lab of Jen-Tsan Ashley Chi, an assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology.

Lesley Chapman - see her profile. Listen to Lesley speak about her Duke experience.“There are so many people who have been affected by malaria, like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington,” said Chapman, who’s been probing recently discovered molecules in red blood cells – called micro RNAs – that might curb the growth of the malarial parasite. It has been her job to assess how such microRNAs are affected by anti-malarial agents.

She also became instrumental in linking malaria research at Duke and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, enlisting help from Nobel laureate and Duke faculty member Peter Agre along the way.

Chapman, who was supported at Duke by a minority scholarship, found her way into the lab through the FOCUS program, which links first-year students to top faculty to engage in discussions, match up interests and participate in research opportunities.

On some campuses, “there are waiting lists to get involved in faculty research,” Chapman said. “Whereas I feel like research opportunities here are basically handed to us like a buffet.”

For Duke undergraduates, participating in research and getting publications isn’t unusual. Almost half of the class of 2007 participated in at least one mentored research experience in any discipline during their undergraduate years, said Mary Nijhout, associate dean of Trinity College and director of the Undergraduate Research Support Office. Among science majors, 73 percent did research, she added.

“The 323 science majors who completed research projects were mentored by 154 different faculty in the science departments of the university, including the biomedical departments of the medical school,” she said.

Not all of those undergrad researchers will go on to careers in the lab or the clinic, but many students come here knowing they can get into a lab relatively easily at Duke.

Junior biology major Sally Liu said she emailed Duke faculty member Nina Sherwood for a research opportunity even before arriving as an A.B. Duke Scholar from San Diego.

Sherwood, who uses fruit flies to study a gene involved in leg muscle disorders in humans, was new at Duke at the time. “She needed people and was looking for student researchers and I expressed
Sally Liu - see her profile. an interest,” recalled Liu, who had spent the previous summer working on nerve development at the prestigious Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. “I told her I had lots of experience,” Liu said.

“I’ve been able to develop my own project, get results for her and contribute intellectually,” Liu said.

Lab work has also been good for “time management,” acknowledged Liu, who is a pole vaulter on the varsity track and field team and a weekly literacy teacher in Durham.

Graduating senior Anita Pai turned her outside interest in the classical Indian dance of Bharatanatyam into a research topic. It involves “a lot of heavy stamping,” she said, “so I was very interested in what happens when you stomp your feet on the ground.”

Born in India but reared in Nashville, Baldwin Scholar Pai joined the research team of animal locomotion specialist Daniel Schmitt, associate professor and chair of biological anthropology and anatomy, who gave her the opportunity to find out.

Pai initially proposed a project on how primate heel pads might compress under different loads and worked with ringtailed lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center. But further reading also got her interested in “how elephants’ feet deform under loads.” She ended up researching both.

With Schmitt’s connections and support from her Baldwin scholarship, she spent one summer at the Royal Veterinary

Anita Pai - see her profile.College near London studying elephant strides. Then she resumed her work with ringtails, which culminated in defending her honors thesis before a jury of professors. “That conversation was probably one of the best I’ve had in my college career,” she says.

Pai agrees that Duke offers a lot of opportunities for undergrads to get into a lab. “I haven’t heard of any professor telling a student that they didn’t have time or were not willing to get involved.”

For Jonathan Russell, a graduating biology and chemistry major from Iowa City, the hard part was getting out of the lab. Russell, who attended Duke with the aid of a Goldwater Scholarship, spent six semesters and three summers in a genetics research lab, often 15 to 30 hours per week.

Studying the roundworm C. elegans in the lab of Alejandro Aballay, an assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology, didn’t leave much time for other things besides his course work, Russell acknowledged. Still he has managed to volunteer to work with pediatric cancer patients and helped lead campus efforts to promote organ donation.
Jonathan Russell - see his profile.

Russell, who won the Biology Faculty Award at graduation, has been on the trail of a gene involved in “innate immunity,” the bodily defense system organisms are born with as opposed to the acquired immune systems they develop later. “What I found is that this gene is essential to C. elegan’s innate immunity,” Russell said. “Get rid of that particular gene and the worms are much more susceptible to pathogens.” He has also begun to investigate possible reasons.

Russell is also the second author on a paper coming out soon in the journal Developmental Cell.

All four of these students say they are headed for medical school or M.D.-Ph.D. programs that train physicians to do both research and see patients. They feel ready.

“If you’re doing an experiment he’s standing right there too,” Chapman said of Chi. “Or if he’s doing one he’ll call you over and ask, ‘do you know why I’m doing what I’m doing?’ I feel very fortunate.”