Like I said in my last post, I am working in the Buchler Lab with my mentor, Nicolas Buchler. When Dr. Buchler entered UC San Diego as an undergrad, he intended to study chemistry, but after taking organic chemistry, Dr. Buchler realized that the aspects of chemistry he enjoyed the most were the ones that were closely related to physics, so he became a physics major. As Dr. Buchler studied physics he also took several molecular biology classes during his undergraduate career. Consequently, by the time he graduated, Dr. Buchler had developed a strong interest in biophysics and proceeded to attend University of Michigan to earn his PhD. For his thesis, Dr. Buchler researched the physics and thermodynamics of protein folding. After earning his PhD, Dr. Buchler wanted to work more on the physics side of biophysics, so he did his post doc with Dr. Terry Hwa, who had previously worked on condensed matter, and at the time was gearing his research more towards biophysics. After his post doc, Dr. Buchler came to Duke, where he set up his lab. He also teaches Bio 201: Intro to Molecular Biology, which is how I first came to know him when I took the class last year.
Unlike many bio labs, where most of the work is focused towards one large project, the Buchler lab maintains several different projects at a time. Dr. Buchler attributes this to the fact that he has many different interests and that in general physicists tend to work on a variety of topics at once. However, all the projects in the Buchler Lab do have the unified theme of exploring how genetic circuits, oscillators, and clocks function in nature and how they can be replicated via synthetic biology.
After being a scientist for so many years, Dr. Buchler feels that the range of his responsibilities has increased over time. When he was younger, Dr. Buchler focused mainly on lab work, but now that he is a PI, he has more responsibilities outside of lab, such as securing grant funds. He says that currently one of the most difficult aspects of scientific research is securing grant funding, because, “the pool of scientists competing for grants is getting bigger, but the budget isn’t”. Despite this, Dr. Buchler loves scientific research because the process of peer review is so rigorous that it makes scientific literature more trustworthy than any other source of media. One of his fondest moments in research was during his post doc when he received funding to actually test his ideas on molecular titration, which he had previously written a paper on. He built a synthetic gene circuit to create molecular titration via protein sequestration and was able to use these results to write a second paper further supporting his first paper on molecular titration. For Dr. Buchler, this idea was his baby and he found being able to grow it into something bigger very satisfying. Here are the links to both of those papers, they are really interesting.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18938177
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694680/
When I asked Dr. Buchler how he made all the big decisions that led him to where he is now, like what schools to attend, what to study, and what to research, he told me two things. First, life is very random. And second, in light of this randomness, all you can do is pursue your interests. Being in college now and beginning to make the choice of what path I go down, I found this advice to be really helpful.
And now this week’s science memes:
