MOUNT DESERT ISLAND BIOLOGICAL LABORATORYCONNECTING SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH

ConnectionsMDIBL SPRING 2013

Aging: The Flip Side of Regeneration

2013 is shaping up to be an exciting and successful year for MDIBL. Despite facing the worst federal funding climate on record, we continue to strengthen our research and educational programs and launch new initiatives to increase MDIBL’s impact. The arrival of new faculty member Aric Rogers (p. 5) and the creation of Novo Biosciences, MDIBL’s first for-profit spin-off company (p. 2), are two tangible examples of the tremendous progress MDIBL is making. We are grateful to the MDIBL staff for their hard work and dedication, and to generous supporters like you who make this work possible.

The current environment demands that MDIBL continue to redefine itself by bolstering our research strengths and applying them in innovative and high impact ways. We are therefore very pleased to announce that Kevin Strange has accepted the board of trustees’ offer of a five-year extension of his term as director. Kevin has done a tremendous job in moving MDIBL forward rapidly in the face of significant challenges.

Connections[FROM THE TRUSTEES]

Connections is published twice yearly by the Development and Public Affairs Office of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove, Maine. Founded in 1898, MDIBL is an independent, non-profit biomedical and environmental research institution.

Senior Advisors: Director: Kevin Strange Administrative Director: Patricia Hand

Connections Staff: Editor-in-Chief: Jeri Bowers Editor and Writer: Ann Cox Halkett Producer: Cushman Creative Cover Picture: Corbin Bailey and his great-grandfather William Bromley, M.D. Corbin is the son of MDIBL’s animal technician Michelle Bromley Bailey.

Photo Credits: Jane Disney Arnold Goldschlager Ann Cox Halkett Karen James Alex Lankowski J.T. Thomas Voot Yin Michael York

Connections Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory P.O. Box 35 Salisbury Cove, ME 04672 www.mdibl.org connections@mdibl.org

To ensure MDIBL’s success, the board, together with Kevin and the staff, has articulated a clear vision to guide our future efforts. Drawing on the diversity of nature and the legacy of evolution, MDIBL will become a global leader in discovering solutions that improve human and environmental health. To accomplish this, we will continue developing strategic partnerships with academia, industry, government, and the public, while maintaining our core values of integrity, collaboration, and rigor.

Over the next three months, the board of trustees and staff will embark upon a comprehensive strategic planning process. Our goals are to ensure that resources are in place to support MDIBL’s long-term sustainability, to strengthen the partnership between the board and the staff, and to establish a clear roadmap that will guide our efforts. We look forward to reporting on our progress at the annual meeting on July 25. We hope to see you there.

James L. Boyer, M.D. Chairman, MDIBL Board of Trustees Edward J. Benz, Jr., M.D. Vice Chairman, MDIBL Board of Trustees

ConnectionsMDIBL

Lab Notes p. 2 Alumni p. 12

SPRING 2013

Voices p. 10

CONTENTS

Cover: As we age, our tissues lose the ability to regenerate and cope with stress. MDIBL scientists focus on finding ways to help us live longer in good health.

Inside Cover: From the Trustees

2 5

8 10

12 Back Cover: Bridges Working Together for Frenchman Bay

Lab Notes

Spotlight Aging: The Flip Side of Regeneration

Spotlight From Maine to Uganda

MDIBL Voices Anne Campbell Research Assistant at MDIBL

Alumni News

Spotlight p. 8

Spotlight p. 5

Lab Notes

2 MDIBL CONNECTIONS

MDIBL’s First Spin-off CompanyMDIBL has launched its first spin-off company, Novo Biosciences, Inc., to investigate the therapeutic potential of drugs to speed healing and regeneration. Novo Biosciences will begin by studying a drug that has been found to double the rate at which zebrafish grow new fins and cardiac tissue after injury. The drug, dubbed ZF143, has already overcome early drug development hurdles, having been tested in humans for an unrelated application and proven to be well tolerated.

“Humans and other mammals have very limited regenerative abilities,” notes MDIBL director Kevin Strange. “A drug that promotes healing and the growth of healthy, new tissue would be of enormous benefit to medicine. This project shows the value of MDIBL’s unique research program. Venture capital managers have noted that ZF143 represents virgin territory in the pharmaceutical market.”

Voot Yin, assistant professor at MDIBL, discovered the dramatic effects of ZF143 on regeneration. MDIBL has secured a provisional patent on the drug, and Novo Biosciences has received a TechStart grant from the Maine Technology Institute to develop investor education materials. Should ZF143 be approved for human or veterinary use, its sales will support MDIBL’s research and education programs.

Art Meets ScienceScience and art are both thriving at MDIBL. After the success of last summer’s exhibit juxtaposing artwork from Maine artists with images generated by our scientists, the Art Meets Science program is expanding in 2013.

Two collaborations between an artist and an MDIBL scientist are underway. An exhibit featuring work resulting from those collaborations as well science-related work from other Maine artists will open with a reception at the Lab on June 27. Tours of the exhibit will be available throughout the summer. Check www.mdibl.org or call Bonnie at 207.288.3147 for details.

Artists Ben Lincoln and Nancy Manter will also join MDIBL scientists Dustin Updike and Voot Yin in leading the MDI Science Café on July 1. In talking about the similarities between art and science, Lincoln says, “Scientists often use words like ‘beauty,’ ‘elegance,’ and ‘grace’ to describe a concept. It indicates to me that on some fundamental level the ability to recognize beauty in a work of art and the ability to recognize beauty in a theory may connect to a similar place in our consciousness.”

Cloud Series, Sunset 2007, by Melita Westerlund, from the 2012 exhibit.

Kevin Strange, Ph.D., and Voot Yin, Ph.D.

[LAB NOTES]

MDIBL CONNECTIONS 3

New Trustee Thomas BoydThomas Boyd, Ph.D., of Encinitas, California, is the newest member of the MDIBL Board of Trustees. Boyd is a consultant for small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, having entered the pharmaceutical industry and managed drug development projects since earning his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Brown University.

Boyd’s first experience with MDIBL was as a graduate student in 1975 when he worked with the late Leon Goldstein. “As a member of the board of trustees,” Boyd says, “I want to help MDIBL thrive in the twenty-first century without losing its uniqueness or focus, so that researchers and students of the future will be able take advantage of its special

environment as I was able to do. I support the Laboratory’s mission as an independent research institute with a unique research focus and a strong educational component.”

New Education DirectorCharles Wray, Ph.D., is MDIBL’s new director of education. Formerly the director of scientific resources, Wray has been at MDIBL since 2004. He received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Yale in 1994 and has extensive experience teaching science to students at all levels, from middle schoolers to undergraduates. “MDIBL’s education program is unique for its breadth and its depth,” Wray says. “When it comes to the range of students and topics, no other institution comes close. We have excellent facilities and great faculty. We constantly push to integrate new scientific discoveries and technologies into our programs.”

New additions to the course schedule this year include a second program for medical students in conjunction with the American Society of Nephrology. Wray says MDIBL is also investigating the possibility of mentored research opportunities for high school and college students during the academic year.

BioTrails in the ParkMDIBL staff scientist Karen James, Ph.D., is gearing up for the first summer of the new “BioTrails” program. A collaboration between MDIBL, Acadia National Park, and the Schoodic Education and Research Center Institute, BioTrails will bring citizen scientists and DNA barcoding together to help monitor the effect of environmental change on plant and animal populations in the park and Frenchman Bay.

Adult volunteers will participate in a five-day event (spread out over two weekends) where they will learn collection techniques, gather specimens from the field, and collect tissue samples for barcoding. Their work will be entered in an international DNA barcode reference library that helps researchers identify organisms and study ecological change.

James will speak about the project at the Star Point Gala to be held on July 26 (see p. 4). For more information or to volunteer, visit www.mdibl.org/BioTrails. BioTrails is funded in part by an Informal Science Education grant from the National Science Foundation.

Karen James, Ph.D.

Charles Wray, Ph.D.

Thomas Boyd, Ph.D.

4 MDIBL CONNECTIONS

[LAB NOTES]

In Memoriam: Leon Goldstein and Richard HaysTwo of MDIBL’s past directors and leading lights, Leon Goldstein, Ph.D., and Richard M. Hays, M.D., recently died. Between them, they represented one hundred years of research and leadership at MDIBL. We will miss their guidance and the wealth of their knowledge and experience.

Leon Goldstein spent the majority of his research career at Brown University, investigating the mechanisms that cells use to regulate their volume under normal conditions and during osmotic stress. At the time of his retirement from Brown in 2010, he was professor of medical science and vice chairman of the department of molecular pharmacology, physiology, and biotechnology. He first came to MDIBL in 1958 to work with Roy Forster on renal blood flow. He was an active visiting scientist and mentor for the next fifty years, further serving the Lab as a trustee from 1968 to 1974 and as director from 1979 to 1983.

Dave Evans, Ph.D., also a long-time visiting scientist and former MDIBL director, notes that “Leon’s interest in comparative physiology and biochemistry, welcoming personality,

memories of MDIBL in mid-century, and unselfish administrative work for MDIBL were models for new investigators at the Laboratory for over fifty years.” Goldstein’s legacy of service was recognized in 2007 with the formation of the Leon Goldstein Fund, which supports MDIBL’s education programs and associated activities. His wife Barbara and three children survive him.

Richard Hays joined the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1960 and served as director of the division of nephrology from 1979 to 1988. He was a pioneer in the field of kidney function and conducted groundbreaking research into the cellular biology of vasopressin (antidiuretic hormone). In the 1990s, he turned his attention to medical education and headed the committee that organized the new division of education at Einstein. He later received the school’s Lifetime Teaching Award.

Hays first came to MDIBL as a seasonal investigator in 1964. He served as the Lab’s director from 1975 to 1980 and as trustee from 2004 to 2012. Bruce Stanton knew Hays over many years at MDIBL and remembers that Hays “provided encouragement and advice during the early stage of my career, which was extremely valuable. He was always very generous with

his time, especially with graduate and medical students, and he was an outstanding teacher. He was an old-school physician-scientist—excellent at everything he set his mind to.” Hays leaves behind his wife, Susan Pope Hays, and four children, including John Hays, a current member of the MDIBL Board of Trustees.

Leon Goldstein, Ph.D.

Save the Date for the Star Point Gala!Plan now to join other MDIBL supporters at the second annual Star Point Society Gala on Friday, July 26. The evening will include cocktails and dinner under a tent near the sea at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor. A brief program will highlight MDIBL’s new “BioTrails” program in collaboration with Acadia National Park and the Schoodic Education and Research Center Institute (see p. 3). Tickets to the last year’s gala sold out quickly, so watch your mailbox for an invitation or call 207.288.3147 to reserve your tickets today.

Richard Hays, M.D.

MDIBL CONNECTIONS 5

“Regenerative medicine,” says MDIBL’s director Kevin Strange, “is not just about healing traumatic injuries. We need regeneration throughout the course of our lives. Diseases cause degenerative changes in our organs, and, as we age, our tissues begin to slowly degenerate. We’d like to slow or reverse those changes.” That’s why the scientists at MDIBL’s Davis Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine study the biological processes that underlie aging as well as those behind the more spectacular acts of regeneration, such as repairing injured hearts in zebrafish or lost limbs in salamanders. As James Coffman, associate professor in the Davis Center, says, “Senescence is essentially a loss of regenerative capacity. We can rephrase the question ‘Why do we age?’ and ask instead, ‘Why do we lose regenerative capacity?’” The goal of such research is not necessarily to increase how long we live, but how long we live well: to focus on

increasing “healthspan” rather than lifespan. Aric Rogers, the Davis Center’s newest faculty member, points out, “No one wants to be a thousand years old and a wreck. But what we’ve shown is that when you tweak something that increases lifespan, you also often delay the onset of age-related diseases, including cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.”

Learning from NatureResearch into the factors behind regeneration and aging is particularly well suited to MDIBL’s basic experimental approach. Rather than focusing on one specific model organism, MDIBL scientists look to the diversity of nature to find an animal that offers a solution to a particular problem. For example, zebrafish and salamanders grow replacement limbs and organs as adults, making them appropriate models for understanding the fundamental processes of limb and organ regeneration. The roundworm C. elegans offers a well-understood and

[SPOTLIGHT]

Aging: The Flip Side of RegenerationBy understanding regeneration, we may be able to improve aging. And vice versa.

6 MDIBL CONNECTIONS

readily modified genome. In addition, its short lifespan makes it an excellent model for studying factors that affect longevity. And despite the obvious differences between humans and tiny nematodes, we share more than forty percent of our genes with C. elegans and even a greater percentage with zebrafish, making what we learn by studying these and other organisms very relevant to human health.

Sometimes closely related species have huge disparities in life expectancy, making them excellent candidates for comparative study. That’s one reason James Coffman studies sea urchins. Variegated sea urchins (Lytechinus variegatus), native to the southeastern Atlantic coast, live for about five years. Purple urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) can live for fifty, and red ones (S. franscisanus) survive up to two hundred years. Coffman and his collaborator Andrea Bodnar at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences are comparing the cell physiology in each of these species to see why this variation exists. They’ve found that the longer-lived species have higher regenerative capacity, even in older specimens. Red sea urchins also continue growing throughout their lives. That fact, combined with their longevity, supports the theory that genes important to growth and development can accelerate cell damage and aging once growth has stopped. As Coffman and others have noted, there is little or no evolutionary pressure to select against this dual role for growth genes, since the force of natural selection decreases as an organism ages and the chances that it will reproduce diminish.

Another side of growthAric Rogers’s research confirms the idea that growth genes can accelerate aging. Rogers arrived at MDIBL in February 2013 after a post-doctoral fellowship at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He has a prestigious, five-year “Pathway to Independence” grant from the National Institute on Aging to study the connection between an organism’s lifespan and the rate of protein synthesis or “translation” in its cells. His research grew out of the observation, first made over a hundred years ago, that animals with a restricted diet live substantially longer than peers that eat freely. In the worm C. elegans, a restricted diet extends lifespan by fifty percent. Rogers studies a gene called ifg-1 in C. elegans that plays a critical role in producing those effects. (In humans, the equivalent gene is known as EIF4G.) The protein produced by ifg-1 helps make protein synthesis possible in the cell and is therefore crucial during a worm’s period of growth. But when Rogers deactivates the gene in adult worms, the rate of protein synthesis declines significantly, and the worms live forty percent longer. “Some people have thought that this effect was a result of simply slowing things down in the cell,” Rogers says, “as though you were burning a candle more slowly. But what we’re seeing when we inhibit ifg-1 is that there’s less protein translation and the cell is being selective about which proteins it creates. I’ve found that the activity of genes related to growth and development tends to go down more when we knock down ifg-1, whereas genes related to stress response, to maintaining homeostasis and keeping the cell alive and healthy, are given preference. So not all genes are being affected to the same extent.” Protein synthesis is an important element of cancer, and Rogers says that clinical trials are being planned that will test the effectiveness of interfering with the human version of the gene, EIF4G, in slowing or stopping tumor growth. Cells, and therefore organisms, live longer when the natural mechanisms they use to protect against the effects of stress are enhanced. Yet, as Kevin Strange says, “Our ability to heal declines dramatically with age, as does our ability to deal with cellular and molecular damage.” Strange’s laboratory studies the way cells sense and respond to protein damage, or misfolding, that results from environmental stress. For example, he studies a

[SPOTLIGHT]

Aric Rogers, Ph.D.

MDIBL CONNECTIONS 7

C. elegans model of protein damage associated with Huntington’s disease. “The Huntington protein is expressed in the brain. If you have a mutant form of the protein,” Strange says, “it’s perfectly fine when you are young. But as you age, your ability to keep that protein in its proper shape declines, for reasons we don’t understand. The protein becomes malformed and sticky and forms aggregates with other proteins. Neurons die and you have brain dysfunction. Age-related protein damage is also a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Deprogramming cellsWhat would help cells stay “young” and better able to deal with stress? Dustin Updike, assistant professor in the Davis Center, studies germ cells, the ultimate regeneration machines. Germ cells are the precursors of reproductive cells like sperm and eggs, and are therefore able to give rise to all the cells of each subsequent generation. “Germ cells don’t age,” Updike says. “They are immortal. In each generation, these cells ‘reset the clock.’ They can do this because they have special factors called germ granules that are not found in cells that age.”

Germ granules regulate protein translation and ensure that germ cells retain their “totipotency,” their ability to become any and all kinds of an organism’s cells. The granules lie over the pores in the membrane of the cell nucleus and contain a sieve-like matrix of proteins that sifts out factors that would otherwise cause the cell to synthesize certain proteins and differentiate. Once a cell has differentiated or become a non-germ cell, it becomes susceptible to aging. The process of differentiation is the process of development, and development is what is recapitulated

or repeated when an organism regenerates new tissue. For example, when a zebrafish grows a new fin after losing one to injury, its cells must first “de-differentiate” so that they can once again trace the steps of development, just as its embryonic cells did at the start of its life. Perhaps surprisingly, stem cells are not involved in this process. Voot Yin and Sandra Rieger, assistant professors in the Davis Center, study the genetic and chemical factors that make new growth and redevelopment possible.

A zebrafish’s ability to regenerate its tissues does not change during its lifespan; it is just as capable of growing a new fin at two weeks of age as it is toward the end of its life, at two or three years. In contrast, newborn mice are able to regenerate heart tissue for the first seven days of life, but not later. Very young children can replace their fingertips after injury, but older ones, much less adults, cannot. In spite of their lifelong capacity for regeneration, Yin points out, zebrafish do age and die. “To see a benefit from this kind of regeneration, it has to be initiated,” he says. “But what if the regenerative machinery were constantly activated during the course of a zebrafish’s life? Could we extend the lifespan of a zebrafish? It’s a great question, and we don’t know the answer yet.” Yin has, however, discovered a drug that speeds the rate of regeneration in zebrafish by fifty percent. To investigate its potential for improving healing in other species, including humans, MDIBL has launched its first spin-off company, Novo Biosciences (see p. 2). “There are two sides to slowing aging and age-related disease,” Aric Rogers notes. “One is to prevent the damage from happening in the first place; the other is to repair damage that has already occurred. The Davis Center at MDIBL brings together people who study each side. This combined approach is the key to the future and promises great things for human health.”

[SPOTLIGHT]

A zebrafish can grow a new tail fin in as little as two weeks.

“ There are two sides to slowing aging and age-related disease. One is to prevent the damage from happening in the first place; the other is to repair the damage that has already occurred.”

“I always had the idea from a young age that I wanted to do medicine,” says Alex Lankowski, an alumnus of MDIBL’s student research program who will receive his M.D. from the Boston University Medical School in June. Alex was born in New York and attended high school in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Each summer he spent time on Hancock Point, across Frenchman Bay from MDIBL. It was there he learned about MDIBL’s high school fellowship program from Barbara Kent, family friend and former MDIBL associate administrative director. In 1998, as a high school sophomore, Alex spent his first summer at the Lab. “MDIBL really opened my eyes to laboratory science and to the scientific method,” Alex notes. “Sometimes with lab work, you’re doing very rote, technical stuff. Then you get results, and you’re able to answer a very specific and meaningful scientific question. I thought that was exciting.” So he applied to come back again for a second year, commuting from his family’s summer home either by car or boat and ending a long lab day with a job at a local restaurant.

Two summers turned into three, and the summer before he entered Dartmouth College as a freshman, Alex started working at MDIBL with Bruce Stanton, Ph.D., professor of physiology at Dartmouth Medical School. Stanton studied the protein CFTR, a mutation of which causes cystic fibrosis. “Alex was easy to work with and very inquisitive,” Stanton remembers. “He was interested in the clinical aspects of research and wanted to work with us because of the connection with cystic fibrosis.” Joe Shaw, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who worked alongside Alex in Stanton’s labs at Dartmouth and MDIBL, adds, “Alex responded compassionately to our research, especially the potential downstream human health applications. He genuinely cared about the work he was doing.” According to Alex, his interest in clinical medicine has “always been guided by a desire to improve the health and well-being of those less fortunate than myself.” After graduating from Dartmouth, he moved to Boston where he coordinated the study of a prototype HIV vaccine at Massachusetts General Hospital before earning an M.A.

8 MDIBL CONNECTIONS

[SPOTLIGHT]

From Maine to Uganda A young doctor’s commitment to global health and scientific rigor was nurtured at MDIBL.

Alex Lankowski with drivers from the Uganda clinic.

MDIBL CONNECTIONS 9

[SPOTLIGHT]

in medical sciences at Boston University (BU). In 2008, he entered the BU School of Medicine. “The first years of medical school, I became even more interested in public health and social determinants of health,” Alex says. “Once you start actually seeing patients and working clinically, you realize that those social aspects are often as important or more important than the biological determinants.” He co-founded and led the BU chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, an international student organization dedicated to promoting access to new drugs and medical technology derived from university research. He also started the Neglected Tropical Disease Initiative at BU and volunteered with a project that links underserved urban residents with health care and other social services. In the summer of 2009, he went to Peru to study Chagas disease, a parasitic disease spread by insects.

In 2011, Alex received an international clinical research fellowship from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and went to Uganda for a year. There he was able to engage his passions for clinical medicine, bench science, research into the social determinants of health—and rugby. He was based at Mbarara University of Science and Technology, which has a clinic where Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have an established research cohort of about 700 HIV-positive individuals. According to Alex, the Mbarara program is “a great setting in which to ask research questions. The group I was part of has a solid grounding in immunology and the biology of HIV infection, but also has a strong research program looking at some of the structural and social barriers to achieving optimal health outcomes in people infected with HIV.” Alex’s primary project in Mbarara was a study of how the gastro-intestinal microbiome, or communities of microbes, relates to the restoration of the immune system in patients on antiretroviral therapy, the current treatment for HIV. But, he says, “that didn’t take up my entire time, so I was able to get involved with some of the research

focused on social determinants of health.” He helped design and conduct a study to determine the effectiveness of different ways of measuring the distance from people’s homes to the clinic in predicting how well those people followed their therapeutic regimens.

For that project, Alex needed to train the drivers who shuttled the study’s participants to and from the clinic. “Hanging out with the drivers was really fun. While I was training the drivers to use GPS, I also got to go along with them to people’s homes. It was cool to see how people lived in these very rural areas.” “I found the people very welcoming and easy to become friends with,” Alex says. “Boston is pretty fast paced. It was definitely different in Uganda, where there’s an emphasis on getting to know your colleagues as people before you get to know them professionally. It was a nice change of pace.” Alex went back to Uganda this spring for two months to set up a control group of non-HIV infected individuals for the cohort study. In June he will graduate from medical school and begin a dual residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is considering pursuing a master’s degree in public health to develop skills in epidemiology and population research. “I’d like to have a career where I’m doing both clinical work and staying involved with research and advocacy,” he says. “I’m getting more and more interested in the big picture. To have the best chance at making a real impact, you need to have a solid evidence base that’s grounded in the scientific method. My summers at MDIBL taught me how to make that happen.”

“ To have the best chance at making a real impact, you need to have a solid evidence base.”

Alex Lankowski

10 MDIBL CONNECTIONS

Name: Anne Campbell

Education: Belfast Area High School, Valedictorian, 2008 University of Maine Honors College, B.S., Chemistry, and B.S., Biochemistry, 2012

MDIBL Affiliation Research Assistant, 2012 – present Alumna, INBRE* course in functional genomics, 2011

MDIBL Voices

MDIBL CONNECTIONS 11

Q: Growing up in Belfast, Maine, were you always interested in science?

A: No, not at all. I was very much into music in high school, and I thought I was going to be a bassoonist and accompanist. I played the piano at a local church and accompanied the school chorus and band. I played the bassoon for all the musicals and music festivals. It felt good, and I thought, “Oh, this is easy. There aren’t many bassoonists. I’ll go to conservatory and just go on from there.” Which I’m glad I didn’t.

Q: What made you change your mind?

A: Well, senior year my father was pretty adamant about keeping other options open. And as valedictorian of my high school, I could go to the University of Maine for free. Since I remembered liking my chemistry teacher in high school, I decided to do chemistry at Orono.

Q: You first came to MDIBL as a member of the INBRE* course for the University of Maine Honors College in the winter of 2011. Did that have an impact on your coming here to work in Dustin Updike’s laboratory last fall?

A: Yes, there was a nice progression. When I came here for the course in functional genomics, I met Keith Hutchison, professor of biochemistry at UMaine, and Ben King, MDIBL’s biostatistician. Four of us from that class started a bioinformatics project on zebrafish regeneration. Keith and Ben became my thesis advisors. So when I heard about the job in Dustin’s lab at MDIBL, I applied. And when Dustin looked at my résumé, he must have said, “Bioinformatics! That’s great! We’ll hire her.”

Q: So when you heard about the job at MDIBL, you had a favorable impression of MDIBL and Bar Harbor?

A: I didn’t really think about any of that when I was applying. What I thought was, “Yay! A job! It’s in Maine, and I won’t have to move!” I wanted to stay in Maine if I could, and MDIBL seemed like a good place to be trained. I know that in a few years I’ll be in some sort of graduate program — I haven’t decided if it will be a Ph.D. program or some sort of professional school like medicine or dentistry — so it was important to me to have a job where my boss would be amenable to teaching me and would expect me to keep moving and progressing. MDIBL has been a great starting point for me. It’s a wonderful community. * MDIBL is the lead institution for Maine’s IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE),

a collaborative network of Maine institutions funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (P20GM103423). Maine INBRE focuses on creating a technically skilled workforce through biomedical research training for undergraduates, providing research support to faculty to increase their research competitiveness, and improving research infrastructure.

[MDIBL VOICES]

12 MDIBL CONNECTIONS

[ALUMNI NEWS]

Arnold Goldschlager, M.D., was a 19-year-old biology major at Union College in Schenectady, New York, when he came to MDIBL in 1957 to be the Lab’s collector. His professor and mentor at Union, Ray Rappaport, Ph.D., was director of the Lab at that time. Goldschlager went on to medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and practices cardiology in California. He has been a member of the clinical faculty of the University of California, San Francisco since 1970. Whenever I am at the sea — which is often since I live on the San Mateo coast — I think of the summer I was the “collector” at MDIBL. I was in awe of the beautiful geography of Acadia and the famous scientists all around me. MDIBL had a faculty that could fill a Who’s Who in biology and medicine. “Collecting” the research specimens involved many and various tasks: exploring the coastal islands with Dr. Knut Schmidt-Nielsen in search of cormorants, picking up harbor seals in Portland, diving for sand dollars, and fishing for dogfish shark (Squalus acanthias). I drove the lab truck and assisted Nels, the crusty old caretaker.

I would rise early to meet the fishing fleet and race back to the Lab so the scientists could do tubular transport studies on monkfish (Lophius piscatorius). The atmosphere at MDIBL was stimulating. Homer Smith was in his heyday and his physiology book, The Kidney, was the standard text in medical schools. Hubert and Mable Frings were studying insect communication. Tom Maren was exploring the compounds in dogfish that would lead to new treatments for glaucoma and epilepsy. There was Al Fishman and his lectures on physical chemistry . . . Henry Heinemann, who combined scientific brilliance and clinical expertise in one brain . . . as well as Hans Borei, a pioneer in embryology, and so many more. Recently, I was dining in a tiny seafood shack in Noyo Harbor in California. As my wife and I watched the gulls and pelicans greet the returning fishing fleet, I told her the story that Knut Schmidt-Nielsen had told me on a collecting expedition. When he was a young biologist in Copenhagen, he lunched at the harbor one day and observed a clear mucus dripping from the nose of a gull. He emptied and rinsed his fountain pen ink reservoir and took a sample of the fluid. Back in his lab, he found that it had a high sodium content. Thus began the discovery of the nasal gland, a salt-excreting adjunct to the kidney which allows sea birds to live in a salty environment. I marveled at how a simple observation could unravel one of Nature’s mysteries. I hadn’t realized that the other diners — fishermen and coast people — were listening to my story, but when I was done, they applauded. I may have left MDIBL but it never left me. It will always be part of me, especially when I watch the seabirds soar over the coast and hear the foghorns.

Read a longer version of Dr. Goldschlager’s memories of MDIBL at www.mdibl.org/alumni.

A Collector Looks Back

Arnold Goldschlager, M.D.

Arnold Goldschlager with the Lab truck in 1957.

MDIBL CONNECTIONS 13

2013 Summer Events at MDIBL

June 17 Karen James, Ph.D. MDIBL Staff Scientist Code of the wild: DNA barcoding for research and conservation July 1 Artists Ben Lincoln and Nancy Manter, MDIBL scientists Dustin Updike and Voot Yin Artists collaborating with scientists July 15 To be announced July 29 Kevin Peterson, Ph.D. Dartmouth College Retracing evolution with new tools

August 12 Dana Waring, Personal Genetics Education Project Harvard Medical School Ethical issues in personal genetics August 26 Miriam Goldstein, Ph.D. Knauss Sea Grant Fellow Plastics in the ocean September 9 To be announced For more information about these and other events, visit www.mdibl.org/events.

MDI Science Cafés Mondays at 5 pm at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor

“Art Meets Science” Reception Thursday, June 27, 5 – 7 pm

Cserr Memorial Lecture Tuesday, July 2, 4 pm Elissa Hallem, Ph.D., speaks about olfactory behavior

Family Science Night Thursday, July 11 , 5:30 pm

MDIBL Annual Meeting Thursday, July 25, 10 am

Luncheon on Star Point Noon

Star Point Society Gala Friday, July 26, 6 pm Asticou Inn, Northeast Harbor Please call 207.288.3147 to purchase tickets.

MDIBL Student Symposium Tuesday, July 30, 9 am – 4 pm

Dinner on Star Point 6 pm

Environmental Sustainability Summit Friday, August 9

The first annual MDIBL Environmental Sustainability Summit will bring business leaders, policy makers, and community members together with scientists and students to address sustainability in the face of today’s environmental, social, and economic challenges.

Keynote speakers: Sylvia Earle, Rebecca Henderson, and Chris Mooney

“Art Meets Science” Reception Thursday, August 22, 5 – 7 pm

Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory P.O. Box 35 Salisbury Cove, ME 04672 www.mdibl.org

Nonprofit OrgU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit #82

Lewiston, ME

Working Together for Frenchman BayThe collaborative approach of the Frenchman Bay Partners, a group composed of organizations and individuals with a stake in the future of Frenchman Bay, proved its worth at a dinner held for local mussel harvesters in January 2013. Mussel harvesting can include dragging heavy equipment across the bay bottom, which uproots eelgrass. Eelgrass beds provide critical habitat for young fish and shellfish, and have been in serious decline along the Atlantic coast over the past two decades.

Jane Disney, P.h.D., (pictured above) is a staff scientist and director of the Community Environmental Health Laboratory at MDIBL. She has been working collaboratively with local mussel harvesters for years to protect areas where the Community Lab and its many partners restore and study eelgrass beds. At the January dinner, all seven harvesters, including representatives of the four bottom-dredge mussel processors in Maine, voluntarily agreed to expand restoration areas for eelgrass. A total of 267 acres is now protected from dragging.

“The positive outcomes from this meeting are a testament to the willingness of different bay users to trust each other and work together toward preserving the resources in Frenchman Bay,” says Disney, who was recently elected president of the partnership. The group is creating a plan for Frenchman Bay and has identified four conservation targets: eelgrass, mudflats, subtidal benthic habitats, and migratory fishes. For more information, visit www.frenchmanbaypartners.org.

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