TheMicroscopeVille
For the last thirty years I've made my living growing microscopic clumps of cells called spheroids to help various folks test the function of genetic mutations that may or may not play a role in turning those cells cancerous.
A good example of the kind of work we do with those spheroids these days can be found here.
But it wasn't always that way.
Back when I was an undergrad (i.e. in the ancient times), I was lucky enough to take a course on the microscopic form and function of human tissues with a grizzled old developmental biologist named Tom Algard.
Algard was the type of guy who used to duck out of exams to practice his fly casting technique where the grass meets the woods outside the Cunningham building at UVIC. When I approached Algard to ask him for advice about graduate school he said the best thing I could do was to contact people whose papers I admired and propose the next experiments.
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For the last thirty years I've made my living growing microscopic clumps of cells called spheroids to help various folks test the function of genetic mutations that may or may not play a role in turning those cells cancerous.
A good example of the kind of work we do with those spheroids these days can be found here.
But it wasn't always that way.
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Back when I was an undergrad (i.e. in the ancient times), I was lucky enough to take a course on the microscopic form and function of human tissues with a grizzled old developmental biologist named Tom Algard.
Algard was the type of guy who used to duck out of exams to practice his fly casting technique where the grass meets the woods outside the Cunningham building at UVIC. When I approached Algard to ask him for advice about graduate school he said the best thing I could do was to contact people whose papers I admired and propose the next experiments.
I took Dr. Algard's advice to heart, read a bunch of papers, formulated scads of experiments, and sent out a handful of letters.
Two people responded.
Two people responded.
One was a very nice fellow at Dalhousie who worked on cranio-facial development. The other was a woman at UBC who mostly cultured cervical and ovarian cells in an effort to determine the mechanisms responsible for transforming them into tumour cells.
Dr. Nelly Auersperg also worked on more esoteric projects at the time, one of which resulted in a paper titled "Morphological and functional differentiation of Kirsten murine sarcoma virus-transformed rat adrenocortical cell lines" that was published in 1981. That paper, and the idea that the state of a cell in a tissue might influence the type of tumour it gave rise to, fascinated me. As a result, I spent the next six years working in Nelly's lab isolating sub-populations of adrenortical cells, characterizing them, transforming them with the K-Ras oncogene, and figuring out that the oncogene had very different effects on those cells as they moved from their more primitive stem state to their fully functional state.
Truth be told, separate from all high faulting' science stuff, I knew I was hooked on the entire enterprise the first time I isolated the cells, got them to stick to the bottom of the culture dish, and looked down the barrel of the microscope to see them alive and happy, filled to bursting with bright little droplets of lipid that contain the raw material they use to produce their functional product - steroid hormones (see image at the top of the post).
Working with Nelly changed my life. She was always curious, always supportive, and she always encouraged those who were lucky enough to train with her to follow their own path as long as that path was hacked out of the unknown with tools built from data of rigour.
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Late last fall, C. and I had lunch with Nelly with one of her old technicians. We mostly talked about our kids and her grand kids (and their kids). And then, for just a few quick minutes, the conversation turned to one of my lab's recent papers. Just like in the old days Nelly had questions, questions that got right to the heart of the matter and tested the rigour of our conclusions. To keep from boring everyone else at the table to death, Nelly and I agreed that we would get together later, separately, to talk about things in detail. Unfortunately, that conversation never happened.
Two weeks ago, Nelly passed away at the age of 94.
As one of her colleagues told me recently, Dr. Nelly Auersperg was a giant in the field. However, science was only one part of her amazing life.
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5 comments:
Advice from Nelly Auersperg second link above
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/student-life/stories/congratulations-dr-nelly-auersperg/
Two of the Q and A's:
Q: What is your biggest piece of advice for graduating students?
A: I have two pieces of advice:
Choose a career that is worthwhile and fulfilling. Not just to make money, as a chore, or just for fun, but as something that you genuinely look forward to going to.
On top of enjoying your job, choose a career that is useful and contributes to the greater good of society! It could be anything – being a sportsperson, a housewife, or a scientist – anything that will make a better world.
Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from being a professor at UBC?
A: One surprising lesson I learned, particularly from my graduate students, was how often they were smarter than the instructor. Even when students were not particularly interested or good at what we were doing, I found the best way to deal with them was to leave them alone because they had their own ideas which were often as good or better than their instructor’s.
NVG--
Yup.
She both took her own advice and she really did let us find our own way.
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What an amazing person., Thank you for sharing.
here work was amazing!
I read the content from both links about Dr. Auersperg and as often happens when reading of people like her it left me feeling like a bit of an underachiever. She sounds like a very interesting and smart person who was ahead of her time as far as what women could and did do. I would have enjoyed hearing you two discuss your latest work although I’m sure my understanding of it would have been limited. It’s also interesting to think about how she affected you in positive ways and spurred you and others to do the good work you do. I wonder by doing that how many folks she was the catalyst for and how much has been learned and discovered by encouraging them to explore their own path as you say.
Thanks for sharing Ross about someone I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Thanks e.a.f. and Graham--
Nelly was the catalyst for the ideas and experiments of many.
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