Of Mentors, Women, and Men

While a graduate student at Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, Camilynn Brannan struggled to identify the protein product of the H19 gene and obtained evidence that it did not encode a protein at all, but functioned as an RNA. At that time, there were not many other examples in mammals of functional RNAs transcribed by polymerase II, so Brannan assumed she would just have to work harder to find a protein, and that's what she told her adviser, Shirley Tilghma

Paula Park

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But Tilghman encouraged Brannan to accept her results, and outlined a series of experiments to test the hypothesis. In the end, with Tilghman's encouragement, Brannan provided good evidence that H19 encodes an RNA. Since that time, there have been numerous other polymerase II transcribed gene products that have been shown to function as RNAs.¹ Tilghman had given her student the confidence and tools she needed to make an independent discovery.

"Shirley taught me the importance of trusting your own data," Brannan recalls. "She treated me like a colleague rather than like an underling. When I left her lab, she very much was influential in where I went to do a postdoc, she gave good advice on that."

Tilghman's infectious self-confidence has become almost apocryphal among her former advisees at Princeton University, where she was named president last month. Karl Pfeifer, a graduate scientist under Tilghman, recalls when the University offered ...

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