Her doctoral advisor told her to amuse herself, and Fiona Watt has done just that—probing individual stem cells and determining the genes and molecules that direct them to differentiate or cause them to contribute to cancer.

By Karen Hopkin Watt Fun! Her doctoral advisor told her to amuse herself, and Fiona Watt has done just that—probing individual stem cells and determining the genes and molecules that direct them to differentiate or cause them to contribute to cancer. FIONA WATTDeputy Director, Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell ResearchHerchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics, University of CambridgeDeputy Director, Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Research In

By Karen Hopkin Methods Man A fever fueled Stanley Fields’ invention of the two-hybrid system for detecting protein interactions. Happily, his passion for devising new ways to study biology’s messy problems still burns hot. STANLEY FIELDS HHMI Investigator Professor of Genome Sciences and of Medicine University of Washington, Seattle F1000: Head of Section, Genomics Kevin Casey Stan Fields was in need of funding. As an assistant professor at

By Karen Hopkin Heads and Tales Randall Moon has looked to tadpoles and stem cells for clues about embryonic development and cell fate. Now he has his eye on turning biology into therapy. RANDALL T. MOON Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Professor of Pharmacology, University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine, Seattle Founding Director and William and Marilyn Conner Professor, UW Institute for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine F1000: Faculty Mem

By Karen Hopkin Take Two Antibodies… Martin Raff has used antibodies to examine membranes, probe immune cells, and shine a light on nervous system function. But he doesn’t believe in waiting for the full story before publishing. Martin C. Raff Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London. F1000: Joint Head of Faculty, Neuroscience © Ben Mostyn It was the Vietnam War that led Martin Raff to a

By Karen Hopkin Strength in Numbers A mathematical mind has helped Leonid Kruglyak scan millions of yeast for the secrets of genetic complexity. © Denise Applewhite for Princeton University Leonid Kruglyak did his graduate work in physics, but when he dove into biology, he jumped with both feet. “The first thing I wrote about genetics was an eight-line letter to Nature,” he says. In it, he defend

By Karen Hopkin Radical Thinking Tom Tullius has coopted the chemistry of free radicals and other energetic particles to unravel the structures of proteins, DNA, and the alliances they form. © Leah Fasten As a graduate student at Stanford University in the late 1970s, Tom Tullius hung upside down off piers to pluck gelatinous, green-blooded tunicates off the pilings. He took to the fields to harvest bag after bag of bean leaves. And he imported envelo

By Karen Hopkin Carpe Datum Embracing new tools and ideas—even a switch from literature to science—Gregory Petsko has seized every opportunity to understand enzyme function and to make science matter. © Leah Fasten A Rhodes scholarship changed Gregory Petsko’s life—before he even set foot in England. Petsko, now a professor of biochemistry and chemistry at Brandeis University, majored in classical literature as an under-g

By Karen Hopkin Death Star A fax that Michael Hengartner sent to his mentor helped turn apoptosis into a Nobel Prize–winning pathway. © Justin Hession As an incoming graduate student at MIT in the late 1980s, Michael Hengartner knew he wanted to work with David Baltimore on the transcription factor NF-kappaB. “He’s such a great scientist and NF-kappaB is such a cool protein,” he says. “So I thought, OK

By Karen Hopkin In the Blood Jean Pieters had a gruesome start, but ultimately hacked his way through the system that enables mycobacteria to survive inside host cells. © Justin Hession Jean Pieters began his life in science in a slaughterhouse. As a graduate student at the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands in the mid-1980s, Pieters was studying the biochemistry of blood coagulation. “My first week there I had to go

By Karen Hopkin It’s Electric One Saturday afternoon in the lab of Erwin Neher changed the entire field of electrophysiology. © Irene Boettcher-Gajewski, MPIbpc. At first, Erwin Neher didn’t realize what he was looking at. He and his colleague Bert Sakmann—who occupied adjoining labs at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen starting in the 1970s—had been trying to perfect a technique for watch

By Karen Hopkin Prize-Winning PhD Aaron Ciechanover didn’t set out to win a Nobel Prize for discovering ubiquitin’s all-important role in protein degradation. He was just trying to graduate. © Dan Porges Aaron Ciechanover could not have predicted that the humble system he was studying would play a central role in everything that happens from embryonic development to adulthood. Of course he was just a graduate student at the time. ̶