{"id":28417,"date":"2024-01-10T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/?p=28417"},"modified":"2024-04-17T11:16:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T15:16:45","slug":"food-for-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/food-for-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Food for thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIT graduate student Juana De La O describes herself as a food-motivated organism, so it\u2019s no surprise that she reaches for food and baking analogies when she\u2019s discussing her thesis work in the lab of undergraduate officer and professor of biology Adam Martin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consider the formative stages of a croissant, she offers, occasionally providing homemade croissants to accompany the presentation: When one is forming the puff pastry, the dough is folded over the butter again and again. Tissues in a developing mouse embryo must similarly fold and bend, creating layers and structures that become the spine, head, and organs \u2014 but these tissues have no hands to induce those formative movements.<\/p>\n

De La O is studying neural tube closure, the formation of the structure that becomes the spinal cord and the brain. Disorders like anencephaly and craniorachischisis occur when the head region fails to close in a developing fetus. It\u2019s a heartbreaking defect, De La O says, because it\u2019s 100 percent lethal \u2014 but the fetus fully develops otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour entire central nervous system hinges on this one event happening successfully,\u201d she says. \u201cOn the fundamental level, we have a very limited understanding of the mechanisms required for neural closure to happen at all, much less an understanding of what goes wrong that leads to those defects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hypothetically speaking<\/strong><\/p>\n

De La O hails from Chicago, where she received an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and worked in the lab of Ilaria Rebay<\/a>. De La O\u2019s sister was the first person in her family to go to and graduate from college \u2014 De La O, in turn, is the first person in her family to pursue a PhD.<\/p>\n

From her first time visiting campus, De La O could see MIT would provide a thrilling environment in which to study.<\/p>\n

\u201cMIT was one of the few places where the students weren\u2019t constantly complaining about how hard their life was,\u201d she says. \u201cAt lunch with prospective students, they\u2019d be talking to each other and then just organically slip into conversations about science.\u201d<\/p>\n

The department emails acceptance letters and sends a physical copy via snail mail. De La O\u2019s letter included a handwritten note from department head Amy Keating, then a graduate officer, who had interviewed De La O during her campus visit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what really sold it for me,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI went to my PI [principal investigator]\u2019s office and said, \u2018I have new data\u2019\u201d and I showed her the letter, and there was lots of unintelligible crying.\u201d<\/p>\n

To prepare her for graduate school, her parents, both immigrants from Mexico, spent the summer teaching De La O to make all her favorite dishes because \u201ccomfort food feels like home.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she reached MIT, however, the Covid-19 pandemic ground the world to a halt and severely limited what students could experience during rotations. Far from home and living alone, De La O taught herself to bake, creating the confections she craved but couldn\u2019t leave her apartment to purchase. De La O didn\u2019t get to work as extensively as she would have liked during her rotation in the Martin lab.<\/p>\n

Martin had recently returned from a sabbatical that was spent learning a new research model; historically a fly lab, Martin was planning to delve into mouse research.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy final presentation was, \u2018Here\u2019s a hypothetical project I would hypothetically do if I were hypothetically going to work with mice in a fly lab,\u2019\u201d De La O says.<\/p>\n

Martin recalls being impressed. De La O is skilled at talking about science in an earnest and engaging way, and she dug deep into the literature and identified points Martin hadn\u2019t considered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a level of independence that I look for in a student because it is important to the science to have someone who is contributing their ideas and independent reading and research to a project,\u201d Martin says.<\/p>\n

After agreeing to join the lab \u2014 news she shared with Martin via a meme \u2014 she got to work.<\/p>\n

Charting mouse development<\/strong><\/p>\n

The neural tube forms from a flat sheet whose sides rise and meet to create a hollow cylinder. De La O has observed patterns of actin and myosin changing in space and time as the embryo develops. Actin and myosin are fibrous proteins that provide structure in eukaryotic cells. They are responsible for some cell movement, like muscle contraction or cell division. Fibers of actin and myosin can also connect across cells, forming vast networks that coordinate the movements of whole tissues. By looking at the structure of these networks, researchers can make predictions about how force is affecting those tissues.<\/p>\n

De La O has found indications of a difference in the tension across the tissue during the critical stages of neural tube closure, which contributes to the tissue\u2019s ability to fold and form a tube. They are not the first research group to propose this, she notes, but they\u2019re suggesting that the patterns of tension are not uniform during a single stage of development.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy project, on a really fundamental level, is an atlas for a really early stage of mouse development for actin and myosin,\u201d De La O says. \u201cThis dataset doesn\u2019t exist in the field yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, De La O has been performing analyses exclusively in fixed samples, so she may be quantifying phenomena that are not actually how tissues behave. To determine whether that\u2019s the case, De La O plans to analyze live samples.<\/p>\n

The idea is that if one could carefully cut tissue and observe how quickly it recoils, like slicing through a taught rubber band, those measurements could be used to approximate force across the tissue. However, the techniques required are still being developed, and the greater Boston area currently lacks the equipment and expertise needed to attempt those experiments.<\/p>\n

A big part of her work in the lab has been figuring out how to collect and analyze relevant data. This research has already taken her far and wide, both literally and virtually.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve found that people have been very generous with their time and expertise,\u201d De La O says. \u201cOne of the benefits we, as fly people, brought into this field is we don\u2019t know anything \u2014 so we\u2019re going to question everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

De La O traveled to the University of Virginia to learn live imaging techniques from associate professor of cell biology Ann Sutherland<\/a>, and she\u2019s also been in contact with Gabriel Galea<\/a> at University College London, where Martin and De La O are considering a visit for further training.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of reasons why these experiments could go wrong, and one of them is that I\u2019m not trained yet,\u201d she says. \u201cOnce you know how to do things on an optimal setup, you can figure out how to make it work on a less-optimal setup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaboration and community<\/strong><\/p>\n

De La O has now expanded her cooking repertoire far beyond her family\u2019s recipes and shares her new creations when she visits home. At MIT, she hosts dinner parties, including one where everything from the savory appetizers to the sweet desserts contained honey, thanks to an Independent Activities Period course about the producers of the sticky substance, and she made and tried apple pie for the first time with her fellow graduate students after an afternoon of apple picking.<\/p>\n

De La O says she\u2019s still learning how to say no to taking on additional work outside of her regular obligations as a PhD student; she\u2019s found there\u2019s a lot of pressure for underrepresented students to be at the forefront of diversity efforts, and although she finds that work extremely fulfilling, she can, and has, stretched herself too thin in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I see an application that asks \u2018How will you work to increase diversity,\u2019 my strongest instinct is just to write \u2018I\u2019m brown and around \u2014 you\u2019re welcome,\u2019\u201d she jokes. \u201cThe greatest amount of diversity work I will do is to get where I\u2019m going. Me achieving my goals increases diversity inherently, but I also want to do well because I know if I do, I will make everything better for people coming after me.\u201d<\/p>\n

De La O is confident her path will be in academia, and troubleshooting, building up protocols, and setting up standards for her work in the Martin Lab has been \u201can excellent part of my training program.\u201d<\/p>\n

De La O and Martin embarked on a new project in a new model for the lab for De La O\u2019s thesis, so much of her graduate studies will be spent laying the groundwork for future research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope her travels open Juana\u2019s eyes to science being a larger community and to teach her about how to lead a collaboration,\u201d Martin says. \u201cOverall, I think this project is excellent for a student with aspirations to be a PI. I benefited from extremely open-ended projects as a student and see, in retrospect, how they prepared me for my work today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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