Microbiologist and Geneticist Shares Experience with Biology Students

Although Parker may be remote this week, that didn’t stop 9th grade biology students, along with science teachers George Austin and Kara Schupp, from joining together to “Skype a Scientist.” This nonprofit charity “aims to build trust in science in the public to get our society back on course for a more evidence-based decision-making public. [They] believe that opening channels of communication with the public is the first step to achieving this goal.” Recognizing the value of connecting with professionals in the field, Austin and Schupp organized a visit with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) microbiologist and geneticist Jon McGinn, which allowed Parker’s 9th graders to hear about his experience in the real world firsthand.

 

During his early years in high school, McGinn was more focused on his band and becoming a musician; his fortunes changed when he took an AP biology course in 11th grade and loved the teacher. This experience developed his passion for biology and science research and, while he was still in high school, led him to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he worked on creating ways to measure mental connections in the brains of mice. Although time limited his abiity to contribute, he left with a better understanding of what “science research” meant. McGinn then attended Stony Brook University and, after initially entering pre-med so he could become the next Dr. Gregory House, he realized his true love was the science research field and returned to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to study the genetics of fruit flies. Next, he went to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences at Rockefeller University where he studied CRISPR (which is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, where he wants to become a professor and then run his own lab.

 

While he spoke on his history, he expounded on the topics he researched and explained how they help inform his current work. He talked about studying fruit flies because of genetic similarities and their simpler systems. McGinn also spoke on learning about CRISPR from his mentor, who was the initial person to take note of the CRISPR phenomenon; research has grown to the point where the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year went to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who pioneered the detailed explanation of the process of CRISPR. He explained that CRISPR, which developed billions of years ago in bacteria, is the first discovered adaptive immune system and works when organisms use bits of a virus to inoculate themselves against repeated infections. This CRISPR process has been repurposed to target specific things. Now, as a postdoctoral fellow, he focuses on a group of bacteria known as Rickettsia, which are transmitted to humans via tick bites and cause a disease called Spotted Fever, working to develop new tools, including CRISPR, to study the genetics of Rickettsia. Research is difficult because Rickettsia cannot survive if it isn’t inside a cell; however, by studying what McGinn described as “Master Manipulators of the Human Cell” and learning how they operate, researchers can hopefully come to understand more about our human cells in the process.

 

Following his presentation, McGinn was gracious enough to spend extra time answering questions from faculty and students. These questions were wide-ranging, from dispelling some general misconceptions on CRISPR to covering topics like the frequency of discussions on ethics, from whether or not CRISPR should be open to the public or regulated to how CRISPR and other technologies might evolve to. Other questions covered how McGinn actually figures out what a gene does and how long that takes, the process scientists would go through if they were to find a solution and wanted to go public and some examples of this genetic work in use today.

 

This visit with Jon McGinn was extremely enlightening for the 9th grade biology students and others in attendance. Not only did they leave with a better understanding of CRISPR and other terms, but they were able to receive a firsthand account of the experiences of a successful professional in the field.

 

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