Graduate student Faye-Marie Vassel investigates a protein that helps cells tolerate DNA damage, sharing her expertise with budding scientists to further STEM education.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Raleigh McElvery<\/h4>\n
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Faye-Marie Vassel has a protein. Well, as a living entity, technically she has many, but just one she affectionately refers to as her own. \u201cMy protein, REV7.\u201d And it makes sense \u2014 if you were hard at work characterizing a single protein for all six years of your graduate career, you\u2019d be pretty attached, too. Plus, the stakes are high. REV7, which aids in DNA damage repair, could ultimately provide insight into ways to combat chemotherapy resistance.<\/p>\n
Although Vassel\u2019s mother trained as an OB\/GYN in Russia before moving to the U.S., serving as what Vassel describes as a \u201cquiet\u201d scientific role model, Vassel spent her early childhood emulating her father, a social worker, and engrossed in the social sciences. She intended to one day work in science policy \u2014 until high school when she joined an after-school program at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and discovered an additional interest.<\/p>\n
Here, Vassel took a series of molecular biology classes and met her first female research mentor, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, who encouraged her to participate in another, more advanced science program funded by the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI initially had my doubts, but just having that support changed everything,\u201d Vassel says. \u201cThat was my first time doing research of any kind, and I got a sense of the sheer diversity of potential research projects. That\u2019s also when I heard there was something called biophysics.\u201d<\/p>\n