Bowdoin Science Journal

honors

Philip Spyrou in the Spotlight

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“The lab and the art studio are fundamentally the same space; you have a material, a question you want to answer, and you experiment” – Philip Spyrou

Give a teen unfettered access to the internet and they might transform into a brain-rotten screenager. Luckily, in Philip Spyrou’s case, hours spent looking at Reddit feeds and YouTube videos did not translate into cognitive decline. In fact, quite the opposite was true; he used his internet privileges to teach himself how to cultivate life. As a high school sophomore, Philip experimented with hydroponics and tried to grow mushrooms using soil he made with whole grains and a pressure cooker. His resourceful and creative fascination with life led him to a chemistry and visual arts double major at Bowdoin College. He now studies the role of proteins in neuron function as a senior researcher in Professor Henderson’s chemistry lab.

When Philip showed me around the Henderson lab, he explained that proteins play a near-infinite number of crucial roles in biological processes. One such process is the formation of synapses in the brain. In simple terms, a synapsis is the coming together of two neurons to exchange information – a crucial mechanism for routine brain function. However, neurons need the ability to “crawl” around brain tissue before they can find other neurons and form synapses. SRGAP proteins enable neurons to develop finger-like protrusions from the cell membrane with which they can “crawl”. Philip studies how the membrane attracts these proteins.

Though one might think studying neurons requires a lab furnished with preserved brains in glass jars, Philip’s research (disappointingly) does not involve Frankensteinian techniques. In fact, Philip works with model cells called Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs), which are artificial membrane systems used to study cell functions. By modifying the GUV’s membrane, he observes how different membrane compositions attract SRGAP proteins. These observations can then be mapped onto neurons to understand how they develop the ability to “crawl” through brain tissue.
 

To study this neuron crawling mechanism, Philip has to think beyond the two dimensions of a textbook. After all, a protein’s three-dimensional structure is key to its function. In this regard, his time in the art studio has proven valuable to his work in the lab. Philip believes the lab and the studio aren’t all that different, and that working with clay and ceramics has trained him on how to gather materials, ask questions, and design experiments with a three-dimensional mindset.

 
 

“I like thinking visually, structurally, and three-dimensionally about the biological processes I study”

 

 
 
 

The three-dimensionality of Philip’s research unfolds at the molecular scale. It requires him to spend most of his time thinking about intangible processes. But, he says, it helps him to think of the applications of his research. For example, loss of proteins that enable neuron cells to crawl around the brain might be implicated in cognitive disabilities and memory loss. This is something he hopes to continue researching by earning a PhD with the goal of eventually becoming a full-time researcher.

As Philip continues on this path toward becoming a scientist, he finds it important to keep reminding himself of where his passion for science comes from. His love for understanding life originated in his backyard when he figured out how to grow plants and mushrooms. Though he does not foresee himself going back to researching those forms of life any time soon, he does want to keep tapping in to his fifteen-year-old self’s creative fascination for life.

Gracie Scheve in the Spotlight

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“To do research, you have to be stubborn. But also, don’t be too hard on yourself” – Gracie Scheve

Around 600 million years ago, marine invertebrates emerged as Earth’s first multicellular organisms. Today, Gracie Scheve is scheming to make a career out of researching their extraordinary life cycles. Her interest in invertebrate evolution and development has not come out of the blue though. Gracie’s family would drive down from their home in Cincinnati, Ohio to Florida every summer for vacation when she was little. There, she would load buckets onto her paddle board, paddle out to sea, and collect countless jellyfish. Back on shore, she would spend hours marveling at her catch. Now, years later, Gracie has carved out her niche in invertebrate biology as a senior researcher in the Rogalski lab at Bowdoin College. With Professor Rogalski, she investigates reproductive strategies of Daphnia, or the common water flea.

In late Spring, Gracie brought me along to her study lake. While she collected water samples, Gracie explained that Daphnia are cyclical parthenogens. In simple terms, they can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Typically, their wild population is exclusively female. This all-female population reproduces asexually into the next generation of clonal daughters with every reproduction cycle. In Gracie’s words “Daphnia are girl bosses”. However, things change when they encounter stress. For example, disease can trigger Daphnia to produce males with which the females will sexually reproduce. This, in turn, results in more genetic diversity, which increases the population’s stress tolerance and survival probability. Through her research, Gracie hopes to gain more clarity on what stresses alter reproductive behavior, and by what mechanism.

Over the summer of 2024, Gracie observed an unexpected pattern in the field; the only stress factor that seemed related to an uptick in sexual reproduction was a novel fungal parasite. Though this might mean Gracie and Professor Rogalski will get to name a new genus of fungus, for now, it is leading to more questions than answers. For example, how does the fungus affect Daphnia? And is it truly inducing sexual reproduction, or was Gracie’s observation merely coincidental? Gracie is currently experimenting with this fungus in the lab. She admitted that she might not find the answers before the end of her senior year. However, she is excited about the novelty of her research.
 

“I want to go into a field where there are questions I am interested in that haven’t been answered yet”

 

 
 

Along with asking new questions comes a level of uncertainty that makes Gracie’s research unpredictable. It means that over the past months, Gracie has experienced many unexpected turns, like when all Daphnia had disappeared in mid-June. She recognizes these surprises are a natural part of research and that it is a good thing she is learning how to handle them now – especially because she hopes to take her next step into an evolutionary biology PhD program. Her undergraduate research experiences have taught her not only to be flexible, but also that research requires an underappreciated range of soft skills. Whereas quantitative skills and book smarts seem to prevail, Gracie shared that having an open mind, being persistent, and being patient with oneself are some of the most important qualities of a researcher. Wherever Gracie will go next, she will take these lessons with her.

“Fieldwork is frustrating sometimes because you’re not in control. And when you do have control in the lab, results might not map onto the field at all. Regardless, you have to be patient with yourself and your research.”

Yasemin Altug in the Spotlight

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“I am delirious in lab. You have to be to have fun” – Yasemin Altug

When she was 12 years old, Yasemin cared little for popular book series like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. Instead, she read Beyin Nasıl Çalışır? – How Does the Brain Work? in Turkish – before going to sleep. At that age, her mom said she was a “special child”. As the years passed, her interest in neuroscience only grew. Now, Yasemin is an undergraduate senior researcher in Bowdoin College’s Powell lab where she studies the lobster cardiac nervous system (hence the red lab coat).

On a late September morning, Yasemin invited me into the lab. As she gathered ice to numb the lobster, she explained that small fluctuations in temperature can disrupt crucial functions mediated by the lobster’s nervous system, like breathing and pumping blood. Whereas our warm-blooded bodies can regulate our body temperature, cold-blooded creatures, like lobsters, are at the whim of their environments.

In the Gulf of Maine, that environment is heating up as a result of global warming and shifting currents. To understand how the lobster’s cardiac nervous system responds, Yasemin investigates how, or even if a specific heart-modulating hormone is involved in warming compensation. To do so, she measures the lobster’s heartbeat at various temperatures in the presence and absence of the hormone. When cardiac neurons are active, they leave behind identifiable signatures in the heartbeat force signal on the cardiogram. Yasemin can use these signatures to derive whether the hormone is affecting activity in specific cardiac neurons, and if warming conditions change those hormone-neuron interactions. She can then use that information to construct a more complete picture of ocean warming effects on lobsters.

To conduct her experiments, Yasemin has to pay the cost of a living organism as she collects the lobster from its tank, numbs it, dissects it, and cannulates its heart. This meticulous work comes with feelings of discomfort and guilt. To overcome those feelings, she focuses on how her studies might help the lives of people living in Maine. In this state, a string of lobster-dependent communities lines the coast. Lobsters hold ecological, cultural, and economic value to these communities. After all, tourists do not come to Maine for its chicken sandwiches. Therefore, warming oceans pose a threat not only to Maine’s coastal ecosystem, but also its culture and to people’s livelihoods. The relevance of her research in all these contexts makes it worth the effort.

 

 

“I have to do what I have to do for the net positive outcomes of research. I think this is more important than my discomfort.”

 

 

Beyond the moral dilemma of working with living creatures, Yasemin also shared that it has been particularly difficult to navigate academia in her second language. On top of that, she comes from a place where some people – especially women – are not always given opportunities to enter STEM fields. During her time in classes at Bowdoin, she saw other students express themselves fluently, get better grades, and achieve better dissections in lab. It triggered her imposter syndrome. But the curiosity and drive of that little girl who used to read Beyin Nasıl Çalışır? before bed never left her. Yasemin realized that the skills often socially expected of women – like being a good listener, working with people, and problem solving – are the most important skills in the lab. Her message to other women in STEM is to not count themselves out:

“Being a good scientist is not about understanding the concepts with ease, it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being able to deal with mishaps… because scientists don’t care if you know how to hold a pipet, they care if you can learn how to hold a pipet.”