Jodi Schottenfeld-Roames on Cell and Developmental Biology and Blending Research and Teaching with GUEST HOSTS Serena Bunkin and Riley McManus from the Bio Break Podcast

So I started applying to programs for a PhD and ended up at Princeton for my PhD program between 2002-2008. Turns out I thought I was going to like some chemistry-oriented version of molecular biology, like biophysics or biochemistry. I absolutely fell in love once I was there with cell and developmental biology. And so in short, cell and developmental biology is the idea of how do we go from being one cell? The fertilized egg to being millions of cells. How do those cells know what to become? As a heart cell know to become a heart cell, how does a lung cell know to become a lung cell? And that's what cell and developmental biology just do. They figured that out. [MUSIC] Hi. Welcome to the Science Fair podcast. I'm your host, Susan Keatley. I'm a PhD chemist, writer, and I love talking to scientists. On the Science Fair podcast, I aim to bring you conversations with scientists doing fascinating, cutting-edge work on all kinds of interesting phenomena, ranging from physics to chemistry to biology and even the nature of science itself. In this third season of the podcast, every other week, two episodes will come out. On Mondays, there will be a shorter, ten-minute episode linking the scientists' research to what's happening in the classroom. And then on Thursday, the full-length interview. So come along and tune in for some Science Fair. Our guest today is Jody Chottenfeld-Romes. Jody is a senior lecturer in the Molecular Biology Department at Princeton University. She teaches a research course for molecular biology majors in their junior year. And she co-teaches a biology course for non-majors and teaches in the Freshman Scholars Institute. Jody's research explores the genetic and cell biological requirements to form a branched tubular organ system like our circulatory system, for example. Jody's research and teaching are tightly integrated. And that's going to be the subject of our conversation today. We also have two special guest hosts. We have Riley McManus and Serena Bunken. They are the hosts of the BioBrayc podcast. Serena and Riley are juniors of the Chapin School. And so we're just thrilled to have them on today. So Serena, Riley, Jody, welcome to the show. [Music] Thank you. Thank you for having me, Susan. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having us. Riley, would you like to kick it off? Jody, we'd love to hear about your path you took to become a scientist. And kind of what sparked your interest in science. And if you could speak about the key step you've taken and what decisions you've had to make to become a scientist on your journey, that would be amazing. Sure. I was one of those kids that just always tended to lean towards math and science. It came easier to me as a child. I remember being in like sixth, seventh grade and holding study sessions for friends on my toses and my osis. And you know, it just for me writing was a little bit trickier. And science came more naturally. And I loved asking questions. So, you know, that was just sort of the path that I went with. At every step of the way in high school, I knew science was sort of the way, although ironically it was chemistry for a very long time. That was really where I was passionate. And so that's where I went into I majored in chemistry when I went to college. I went to a really small liberal arts school in my hometown. So I'm from the Wilkes Barrow's Grinton Pennsylvania area, which two decades ago no one would have known about. But because of the American office, it became a little bit more familiar to everyone in the public. And so that's right around where I'm from. So it's always fun to watch the office because I see all those signs that were part of my childhood. And, you know, we didn't really have, I had a difficult childhood. And so my mom had a lot of mental health issues. And because of that, there were restrictions on sort of where I could go for college. And I had a free scholarship to my hometown school. So I went to King's College. And it was an amazing, small class learning experience. Whereas a chemistry major, and there were sometimes only five people in my chemistry class. So it was awesome. Honestly, it was where I fell in love with the model of having one-on-one conversations with your professor. And thinking that it was okay to leave class and go into their office and say, "Hey, here's what I didn't understand about this lecture." And that kind of grew into knowing that I wanted to do that in the future. But only after I had to push the med school idea out of my head because I think most, young adults as they're growing into themselves think that if they like science that med school is the end of that journey. And I see that all the time now with my students at Princeton. And that's wonderful. We need lots of great doctors. But it's also great to know that you can enjoy science. And there are many different paths that you can take in that space. So once I figured out that med school was not for me. I had done a lot of chemistry research for a while and loved every second of it, but also felt that need to learn a little bit more about the human body. And even though I didn't want to work with patients directly by my junior year in college, I knew that I wanted to figure out why diseases happened. Like how does the body normally form? Or naturally form? Normally it's the wrong word. And what goes wrong when diseases happen? And is there a space for me in that discovery there? And so I jumped shift a little bit from chemistry and did an internship at a molecular biology center that was about an hour from my house. Because again, I was a little restricted with where I could go. And so it had to be within driving distance at the time. And I worked in a new lab that was working on muscular dystrophy. I had never taken a molecular biology class before. I had taken genetics. I loved the idea of genetics. But this was all new to me. And within two months, I had learned how to cut and paste DNA together and work with a gene that when mutated led to muscular dystrophy. And we were going to try to put it into cells in culture and figure out what went wrong with the cell membranes when this sort of altered version of the gene slash protein we'll get into that in a little bit was in cells. And I was hooked. And I was like, oh, this is what I'm going to do. So I started applying to programs for a PhD and ended up at Princeton for my PhD program between 2002, 2008 turns out I thought I was going to like some chemistry oriented version of molecular biology like biophysics or biochemistry. And so in short, cell and development biology is the idea of how do we go from being one cell, the fertilized egg to being millions of cells. How do those cells know what to become as a heart cell know to become a heart cell? How does a lung cell know to become a lung cell? And that's what cell and development of biology just do they figure that out. So I worked with zebrafish. That's really cool. Transparent. Really rapidly developing organism in the lab, but knew that I wanted to teach at the liver arts college level eventually. And wanted to go into a slightly less expensive, simpler system, although still very complex system to work with, which is the fruit fly. So I went to do my postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, which is for those of you who are listening who don't know what that path really looks like. You go into your PhD for about anywhere from four to six years. It's like a long time, but when you love what you do, it feels like it flies by. And then you, if you want to keep going and maybe think about being an academia or even an industry, sometimes it's just always nice to do the next step, which is a postdoc, which is do more research in someone else's lab at some other institution. And learn a little bit more, get new experiences, and then maybe start your own lab on some tangential part of that science that you were doing. So we did that at the University of Pennsylvania, worked in fruit flies trying to understand what genes are required to form our blood vessels. And was a little geographically restricted, wanted to be geographically restricted for family reasons. And then went off to do my visiting assistant professor ship at Swarthmore College, which was a dream, loved every second of working with undergrads at Swarthmore, had a small lab there, and did some science together. And then ultimately, I had my second child while I was at Swarthmore. I was commuting very far and made the decision that I wasn't going to be the parent that I wanted to be if I stayed there. And was extremely lucky that Princeton was looking for someone to revamp their junior level research experience in the classroom. And it just really worked out. So I came back in this beautiful niche position where I still get to do a little bit of science. teaching, which is exactly what I wanted to do. That's amazing and I think I can speak on my behalf that I've also very been science-oriented and that's definitely the path that I want to take and it's great to see how like one little move impacted another and to see where you're at today is incredible. So going off that and speaking about your research, could you tell us a little bit at how you're teaching at a high level and how integrating research and teaching helps your major students? Yeah, sure, so all focus. I mean first of all, it's so wonderful that you guys are interested in science. All I can say to both of you is keep following it as much as you are enjoying it and never be afraid to sort of change direction or change your mind. I'm not getting stuck in this. Well, I should do this. Just me to say that you're always following what your passion is for. You want to be happy in the future. You want to love what you do. So just follow it as far as you want to go. But yeah, and so how I bring research into the classroom. So let's focus on my fall course, which is the course that I teach for junior molecular biology majors at Princeton. And so the mindset behind this course is that you know these students have decided that molecular biology is the direction they want to go. This is what they're going to major in. And they've taken the introductory classes at Princeton in both molecular biology and chemistry. And they've had lab classes associated with those courses. And those courses are really important, right? Introductory courses are incredibly -- they're important for giving you the foundation that you need in order to be able to ask questions in the future that you want to ask in that particular space. So if you want to be in molecular biology, our introductory course at Princeton is phenomenal. My colleagues who teach that are true educators who give the students what they need to be able to walk into higher level spaces and begin to ask questions. And that's where my course comes in, which is I'm this intermediate space between students walking into labs at Princeton and starting their own independent projects. But first they need to know that they can do that and how to go about doing that. So that once they walk into that lab, they feel comfortable and confident in that space that they feel this sense of belonging. Like I've got this, I belong here. And that's where my course comes in. So instead of having introductory labs where you're learning techniques, you sort of have this recipe or cookie cutter aspect to the lab, which are incredibly important and extremely well done. But what my class is an original research course. And so it's really a 12 week rapid fire somewhat thesis experience. Students will go on after this to actually do their junior senior thesis work. But I kind of combine all of the elements of what that will look like over a year and a half into this 12 week rapid fire thesis experience. And the mindset behind the course is that we're going to put textbooks away now because that's sort of how you've done your sort of quote learning up until this point, which is you, you know, you read, you get information from a textbook, which is summarizing lots of publications that are out there from scientists just like me doing that, doing the work in the lab and sort of summarizing it. So it's digestible in a textbook, but where we really want to learn to be a scientist is to then be able to learn how to ask those questions that you're seeing the end result of in a textbook. And so my job in my in this class is really to get these students into the lab in a way that they haven't seen before, which is now you're you are to be the scientist, right? And I'm going to figure out how they did the science that ended up in that textbook. And you're going to see it's really important to learn how to ask a question, how to generate a hypothesis to address that question. And then to design experiments that will test that hypothesis and really to get comfortable with discovery and the unknown. And you know that it's not only exciting to uncover something new, but also there's a certain level of comfort that has to come along with that from transitioning from being a student in a classroom where you're taking an exam and there's this correct answer that you're supposed to give. And that's actually really hard to move away from as a student to say, well, there's no answer. This is all novel. These are questions that I think are going to be interested in these of what genes are required to form blood vessels. We're going to do that in this simpler, but still complex system, the fruit fly, but we don't know what the answers are. We have to design those experiments. We have to get the data. We have to analyze that data. And then it's your job to report the data. You have to learn how to communicate that science, both in an oral and in a written format. And that's what the class is all about. Jody, I'm sure this is a really hard transition for students. What have you found? Maybe it's something you do or something that just kind of inherently comes up on their journey. What really helps them turn the corner? I think it's a process. I'm going to be honest. It's not immediate. I think there's a lot of coming back at me with what's the right answer. And then it's a lot of me saying, there is no right answer. There's just the data. And the data is going to tell you, you know, you're going to be able to make conclusions off of that data. And you're going to report that back to me. What are you learning? Like I'm excited to see what you're learning. You're going to tell me something interesting about this phenotype. And so we'll explore those words in a little bit. I'm sure I'll get a follow up question so that we can explain that for the listeners. But a lot of it is me encouraging and my wonderful team of educators that it's okay to be confused that it's okay to struggle that that struggle is actually really important. We don't want to get, we don't want to struggle to the point of frustration and walking away from it. But we that struggle is where the learning comes from. It's actually really important to be confused to sit with the confusion. And work through it often work through it independently with your peers, you're working in a research team, talk to them, see where you can get to and then start to talk to us too. And we'll bounce ideas off of each other. And so I think sitting with the confusion, it takes, it takes some time but by the end of the experience, I think that's when students are like, oh, I see why this was important. But it takes some time to get there. Yeah, I also love how you think about it in terms of what was the science that led to the textbook. I always wondered that as a student. And I always wanted to understand like how, how is it that we know all of this. And so just the fact that you're thinking about it from that perspective and sharing that with them, I think is so useful. So I'd love to talk about the specifics of the science, the students are exploring in your class and, you know, some of these are deeper dives or extensions of what many of our listeners in high school or early college or middle school are learning now. So one big idea you explore with your students gets to the word you just mentioned is sort of how a gene affects a phenotype. So can you talk about how your students explore this and then please also tell us what a phenotype is. Sure. So let's take a step back further and first think about the word gene. So let's start with the fact that we have these amazing polymers or strings of molecules called DNA that are sitting in the, for us, we're you, periodic, meaning that ourselves have a nucleus. And so in our nuclei of each of ourselves, these little tiny compartments in the center of ourselves, so it's our DNA. And that DNA is the same in every single one of ourselves. And I think that's important for all to get started in this space. So that DNA is the, you'll often hear it called the blueprint for life. I will say I always found that really confusing when I was little. Like what does the blueprint mean? And I wasn't always sure what to take away from that. And so, you know, I want everyone to appreciate that the DNA in each of your cells is a set of instructions. And what it's giving information for is actually how to make these other molecules called proteins and proteins are the molecules in your cells that really do everything. They are the functioning units in your cells that are interacting with each other that are performing tasks to allow yourself to look the way it looks and to function the way it's functioning. So, and so I want everyone to understand that a kidney cell has a different set of proteins in sort of floating around in its space, its cytoplasm, then a red blood cell. all. They have. have different, a different repertoire of proteins in each of those. And that's really important. It's those proteins in the repertoire, the diversity of the proteins that are in that, in those particular cells, that are enabling those cells to look different, have different shapes, have different functions, and ultimately different behaviors in your body. And the instructions to make those proteins, it's the same instructions in every single cell. And so, as molecular biologists, and specifically as cell and developmental biologists, what we're trying to understand is, well, why is it that some of the DNA gives the instructions to make these proteins, and it kidnysel, but these proteins in a red blood cell. And so that's what we're constantly trying to figure out. And the little parts of the DNA that actually have the direct instructions to make a protein, those are called genes. And so, genes are kind of scattered throughout the DNA, but there are other parts to the DNA that are all pretty important. But, you know, when a gene, so the sequence of the gene, is what we call the genotype. Or, and it doesn't necessarily have to be just the sequence of the gene. It's the sequence of the DNA at any given point on the DNA that's going to matter from making that protein at that particular time, in that particular cell and how much of it, that's the genotype. So, what the sequence of the DNA looks like. And then the phenotype is really the trait or the behavior, the outward appearance, the manifestation of that particular sequence of DNA. What we're trying to understand in the lab is whether or not a specific gene that's going to code to make this particular protein is important for building blood vessels. And whether it's important for not just generating those types of cells, but also the shape of the cells, the function of the cells, whether or not they form these beautiful tubes, the vessel itself, so that blood can flow through them. So, it's not just whether the cell is there, is the cell shaped correctly, and is it able to function? And all of that is the phenotype. And so, what students in my course do is they deplete a gene. So, we have many methods to do that. That'll be another podcast. But we have many ways to compromise a gene. And therefore, not make the protein that that gene is coding for. And then we ask what happens when this animal doesn't have this protein anymore? Can it still make those vessels? And if it does make those vessels, do they have the correct shape? Like is this cell shape appropriate? Is it still functioning like a vessel? And I should add here that fruit flies don't actually have a vascular system, like we do. What I study is the respiratory system of fruit flies, and that we call the tracheal system of the fruit fly. But what I want the listeners to appreciate is that the structure, the network of vessels is incredibly similar to our vascular system. And it's actually been shown for the past, sort of, almost three decades now, that many of the genes that are required to initially form the beautiful network of these vessels is the same in the fruit fly tracheal system versus the vertebrate vascular system. And that it's actually historically been a model to use to uncover those genes. First, we learn about it in these somewhat simpler systems to work with in the lab. And then we can carry that over to working with vertebrate systems in the lab or in culture and see that the same genes are responsible for forming those blood vessels. Have there been any surprises in your group or in some of the recent literature in terms of maybe you knock down a gene and it doesn't have any effect or are there combinations of proteins? Yeah, I'm not sure that I'm not sure I would consider them surprises as we sort of have these general areas of cell biology that we think are most likely critical. We can kind of pick candidate areas that we think are going to be interesting. And then oftentimes they are, not always. And so I think that we have come up with a multitude of sort of interesting genes, slash proteins that are at work here. I think maybe some of the surprises are that many of the proteins that we look at have historically had roles in cell division when one cell splits to two. But interestingly, the vessels that we work with, they're post-mitotic, meaning that they no longer divide. So it's fun to take proteins that have been written about historically and studied historically in this context of how do you separate two cells and then think about, oh, how do you repurpose evolutionarily these types of proteins to impact cell shape? And sort of like, so one of the areas that I work in is branching more figenesis, which is thinking about how cells or even individual cells can take on these beautiful branched shapes. And when you think about it functionally, it's really important that they do that. And think about neurons. So the cells that I work on in the respiratory system are also very similar in shape to neurons that need to form these extensive branch networks within a single cell so that they can increase their surface area and be able to touch different parts of tissues and be able to send signals. And in the fly and the tracheal system is very similar, where the respiratory system is trying to provide oxygen to all of these cells in the surrounding area. So these individual cells that I work on in the lab with students, they send these beautiful branched projections out to increase their surface area to be able to provide oxygen. And so not only are we studying vessel formation, but at its core, we're studying more generally, how does cells take on these amazing fantastical shapes? You know, when you're sitting in a classroom and I'm sure Riley and Serena have seen this where your instructor is drawing a circle on the board and then you talk about all the components inside those cells. Maybe the Golgi or the ER or the nucleus. But it's just a circle that's sitting in the textbook or on the board. And the truth is, most cells don't look like that at all. We do that to help illustrate what a cell is, but actually cells take on these crazy shapes. And so not only am I interested in understanding how branched organ networks are generated, but also at its heart, I'm really just fascinated by how do cells take on such fascinating complex shapes. And so in this case, I do think it's a fun transition or leap to make of all of these proteins that are required to divide two cells. But now we're putting them in some other context where they definitely seem to be playing a role in forming these really sort of stellate star-like structures for these particular cells. And so I think it's fun just to kind of play with the puzzle of, okay, well these proteins are doing this in this context. They're still playing the same function in the cell. The protein hasn't changed, but now it can take on this other role in a non-dividing cell and really help support cell shape. And I think that's interesting. >> Can you talk with us more about the concept of a model system? So you're talking about fruit flies as a model system. We know there are others, yeasts, earthworms. How is a model system useful? And I guess, what are the advantages and then what are some of the limitations? >> Yeah, I love that question, Susan, because I will say one of the most important concepts that I want students leaving one of my other courses, my non-major's course. So these are students at Princeton who will only take one lab STEM course while they're there. They're humanists, they're economists. They might be focused on languages. All wonderful, important things for society. It's our job to have them leave understanding DNA, why it's relevant to their everyday lives and how to be science literate citizens going forward so they can participate at a high level in public discourse when it comes to science. And one of the most important things that I want them leaving our classroom with is that living things are conserved. That all of the life that they see around them is very similar. And that's what I mean by conserved, conserved meaning similar. That so for instance, the fruit flies we were just talking about. Humans share about 60% of the same genes, right? Those units and the DNA that are going to code for proteins. We share about 60% of the data. of those genes with fruit flies. I'm not, is the power of using a system like fruit flies in the lab, these model systems that we talk about, because we're often limited with studying human biology in the lab for obvious ethical reasons. We have over the last 100 years really sort of molded certain organisms that work well in the lab that have extremely conserved biology with humans. That doesn't mean we're the same, we're not the same, but molecularly our DNA is extremely similar and the proteins that are encoded by that DNA are very similar so we can learn so much about our own biology by working with systems in the lab where we share those same proteins. And so it's easier. And I mean the ethics can still be debated. I think that's really important to say out loud. I'm a vegetarian and I'm conflicted by what I do and what I love every single day in the lab. And I tell my students that all the time. I try not to be hypocritical and of course I be profan and I take advantage of modern medicine and all of that is because we have worked with model systems and animals over time. Everything that we, for the most part, understand about ourselves is because we have studied various animals in the lab. But with that said, I'm still conflicted by it and think about it and talk about it and have an awareness of it. And so I don't want to ignore thinking about how to work the most ethically that we can with animals in the lab situation. But it is really important to understand that why the NIH and NSF gives funding to working with model systems in the lab is because they have been enormous in terms of their impact for us understanding our own biology and with human health. You can honestly, you can sit and look at the list of Nobel prizes that have been awarded to the work that has been done with different model systems, the CLGINS, the WIRM, the Fru fly, just off the Melana Gaster, of course, mice, but frogs and fish and I don't want to forget our unicellular model systems, yeast and bacteria have been foundational to us understanding how ourselves work and how we know that DNA is the set of instructions that codes for proteins. So yeah, you can't overstate the importance of working with model systems in the lab and why really at its core how similar we are as living things. - I think it's really interesting that you mentioned working with model organisms. I know in the last year I had the chance to work with Dr. Sofila and also CLGINS in a class I took at my school and it was really interesting to be able to apply like some of the past research I have done. I mean, I ended the semester in a final project that I actually did on CLGINS, but I spent my whole winter term working with Dr. Sofila and that was really interesting experience to be able to like better understand how there's overlap between the different genes and looking at how we can use research and apply it to many fields like medicine. - Yeah, honestly the types of, that's great, Riley. Honestly, I love working with the worm. I mean, I haven't done it personally, but I do have, I do have a really great lab that I have the non-major students do to look at cell divisions in the worm and I have many colleagues who work with the worm. Such that like, just like you said, that it's neat to learn how like flies and worms often have the same genes or the proteins that they make. And so most of the time that we find something really interesting in the course, slash in my sort of small undergraduate base lab, when we find something interesting that's playing a role in vessel development in the fly, we don't just wanna know that it's playing that role in a fly, we also wanna know that it's doing this in other organisms. And so I have a colleague friend who works in the worm and we're often thinking about, okay, maybe you'll have a student project work on work. We found that this protein's really interesting in the fly respiratory system. She'll have a student knock it down in the worm extracurricular system, which forms similar types of vessels and say, is it playing a conservative role in that system as well? And then we always wanna leap to zebrafish too and say, is it playing a role in the zebrafish fascculature? Ultimately, we're really trying to understand what genes are responsible for this in a human, so that we're the basic science side of this, where we just wanna know what those genes are. But then you can imagine where that goes, which is for therapeutics in terms of if there are situations where if someone's had a stroke, you need to build new blood vessels. And so companies will wanna develop drugs to hopefully target things that these scientists like me might find so that you can promote. These are the genes that are required to form blood vessels. Here, maybe we can stimulate these or promote these particular gene/proteins, or in situations like cancer, where you wanna stop blood vessel growth because you need blood vessels to feed that tumor. And now, okay, well, if the basic scientists have figured out, oh, here's a set of genes that these blood vessels need in order to keep building more blood vessels, maybe we can figure out targets to inhibit those proteins to stop blood vessel growth for those tumors. So it's just neat to hear you pick up on, like, yeah, all these genes are similar between these different organisms, and it's interesting to work with many of them in the lab and see where those commonalities are, and then leap from that and see, okay, what can we learn from all of this for our own biology, too? - Yeah, I think this is all so great, and I love how you provided a little refresher for us on our ninth grade bio, and Riley's, she took the LARM class, the Lab and Research Method last year. And also, for me, I'm a visual learner, so just having a more hands-on method to learn is incredible, and I think, unfortunately, it is sometimes that we do need a test on animals and use animals for research, but if we do it now, we can save more lives and learn more, which I think is so great. Jody, your job is so unique that you both teach and research simultaneously, but in your case, they are tightly integrated, and that's pretty rare for academics, so I'd love if you could reflect on how teaching has pushed your research forward and vice versa. - Yeah, that's a great question, Serena. I also love the fact that you brought up that you're a visual learner. I think it's really neat at this level to hear you reflect on your own learning and what works for you. I'm gonna use that to segue into the answer. I'm gonna start with the second half of the question, which was how doing research in the lab affects my teaching. Whether I've learned anything from having this type of class when it comes to the type of effective teaching methods that I employ in this type of course. I really wanna take what you said as having a research course is one of these lovely opportunities to have regardless of the size of the class, which can range for me anywhere between 40 students and 73 students. So that's a lot of students to have independent research projects with, and to be fair, they work in research teams, so they are responsible for a lot of their own work, but they are working with their peers, and employing teamwork skills, which is incredibly important for the future. So it's not just about the science in my class, but also building skills for professional development in the future. But I think one of the lovely things about having a research style course with larger numbers sometimes is that it has to be a community style course. Like when you're doing research, it's not just one person standing up there and lecturing in the front of the room, and you're sort of passively listening. It's, I am talking to each one of you all the time at any given point, and I am circling a room the way the course is set up is that I've got two sections. Half of them are with me on Monday and Wednesday for three hours each time and half are with me on Tuesday and Thursday, and then I have all of the students together in a sort of one hour workshoppy type environment on Fridays, so that everybody in the course gets to know each other a little bit. But I think the aspect of having a research course is that you get to see and appreciate everybody's different learning styles, and you have the opportunity to give students a huge set of dynamic assignments so that they have different modes of being able to demonstrate for me that they understand the science. And I think that's really important when you have a diverse group of students trying to enter the research space and figuring themselves. out and I can really, as I get to know them, which, you know, I set goals for myself that within one week, I will know everybody's names, that this is, you know, this is a very interactive, again, it's a little bit of a large class for this style thing, but it has to be a small, a small class feel and community oriented. And so I think that is what helps kind of guide the teaching style that I have in that setting and really get to know the students, really bring it on this individualized sort of basis of what does this individual need in this moment to have this discussion so that they can get their understanding to the next level. Because ultimately the speed at which you do it in my course is not that important. I want everyone to get there. So it's really the culmination at the end of the course, you know, have, are you able to demonstrate to me that you understand the question that you were asking that you were able to analyze the data from the experiments you performed and that you're able to communicate it to me in different styles. And you may be better at one than another, that's totally fine. We're going to work on improving all of them. But that way you really get to see, even in just an everyday conversation, whether a student has really started taking on that sort of scientist mindset. And so I think that's one of the lovely things about having a research course. Having the opportunity to have this type of research course, being in a teaching environment is that, you know, if students really take to the research and they enjoy it, they can stay on with me as a thesis advisor if they want to get sort of deeper into that space beyond what we can do in the course since we only have 12 weeks. And so that's led to a lot of lovely partnerships leaping out from the course with students at Princeton and hopeful publications that are coming in the future on some of the science that we've been able to accomplish. So I think it's a really fun space to, you know, get some students more interested in the work. But ultimately I will say that I think of the course less about my own work and much more as a springboard for students to go off into someone else's lab and really feel like they can go after a project that they're entirely passionate about. I mean, one thing that I tell my students all the time is you don't have to love what my research is or what we're, or even sell in developmental biology for that matter. There are so many different amazing spaces in molecular biology, immunology, biochemistry, microbiology, virology. I'm just naming a few. And so my hopes are that students really spend their 12 weeks with me buying in to this particular research experience as an opportunity to ask questions like a cell and developmental biologist would, but then just to use all of that to go into someone else's lab and really go after an independent project that they're super excited and passionate about. So even though it's great that some students do stay with me, I obviously love that and I love working with students outside of the class as well on their thesis work. I'm equally as excited to see students and talk to them about their own work in various labs at Princeton. I think it's great that you speak about students that have such a high level of passion for what they're doing that they continue to work with you or they still pursue what skills they've learned in different labs. But I was kind of curious about, I know it's mentioned on your faculty page that you teach students with varying interest levels from students who want to pursue this to students who are just taking a course like this for the first time. And I think it'd be great to hear if you could speak or if you could speak about how working with different kinds of students is important for them to learn about topics like DNA, even if they don't plan to go into science. Yeah, I almost think it's more important for me to teach classes that have students that don't plan on this being their path at all. I think there's, this is not a slate to my majors who I absolutely love, but I think, you know, especially we live in times where there are lots of sources to get information. And what I love is having the opportunity to have a set of students in the class where we can explain how the science is done, what the scientific method is, and how scientists approach their work. And, and then be able to do some of that science in the lab. So I teach the lab component of this non-major's course as well. And so it's not just about talking about the science, but it's about doing the science with students that don't plan on doing any science in the future so that they can leave with the appreciation of how that science is done. And again, we, you know, with different model systems in the lab, we aim to do a lot of work in the lab that's relevant to their everyday lives. If they're going to sit on a jury, they'll understand what the words mean when they say the DNA evidence suggest this. And they'll also understand that it's suggest this, not that it proves this, it's suggest this, of whether, you know, someone has committed a crime or not. But at its heart, you have to understand the molecular biology behind that statement in order to be able to evaluate the information that you're being given. So we do forensics in the lab. We really, we go after that statement, we make sure that students understand what that means. We do, we do some microbiome stuff in the lab so that students are well aware that even though we're human, we're actually this beautiful sort of entity of symbiotic relationships. And we explore that in the lab. We explore what it means to have genetically modified foods. So that students are well aware of what the science is behind that. And, you know, whether or not that's inherently unhealthy or not. And then we go on to personalized medicine. We talk about, you know, we want students walking out being able to have high level conversations with their doctors about their own healthcare. You have to understand genetics, human genetics in order to be able to understand a diagnosis that you might have received. What is can, what is cancer? How does it happen? And what does it mean if someone is looking at the genome or all of the DNA from a particular tumor, whether it's you or a family member, we want you to be able to participate in those discussions so that you feel like you can be an advocate for your own health. So we do some personalized medicine. We, you know, what does it mean if you have a variation in a gene called braka one or braka two. We can look at that data. We'll look at actual samples of sequencing data where you can see that variation in the gene. What will that mean for that individual? What it might mean, what it might not mean, what kind of decisions that comes along with. But we want individuals to walk out of our classroom with that level of knowledge. And then we go into topics such as evolution as well and to really understand how all living things are in some respects related to one another. And so I think all of those topics are so important that I wish all of our students at Princeton could leave with all of that. But I'm sure there's also many other STEM fields that I would want students understanding as well. So it doesn't have to be limited to ours. But I think that's almost equally as important as the wonderful set of majors that we have that will go on to do wonderful, important discoveries or impacts in health care. But I, I want all of our students to be advocates for themselves going forward in this space. That sounds like such a wonderful class. I would like to take that class. I wish I had, I wish I had been able to take that class. Just even though I was a chemistry major, I think when you're a science major, you're really in the weeds. And you might forget to step back and think, what are these bigger, broader issues that affect society, that affect our communities? It's funny that you say that season because many of our majors, they're not allowed to take the class. But there always, why can't we take this class? Because it's true, you get stuck in the weeds and you don't get to always sit and think and have discussions about the big, the big picture or the global health aspects to it. But I will say we do have community auditors. So you're always welcome in the future. That would be so much fun. Yeah. So, Jody, what advice do you have for students interested in science? And what What can they do to explore opportunities for themselves? and science. Yeah, you know, I think I think one of the best things that students can do is take advantage of the fact that colleges around you will often have sort of free outreach events that and what I love about that is they're accessible to all because you know having young kids I'm well aware of all of the steam and stem camps and opportunities that are after school places you can go and they are they are fantastic but they're also not accessible to everybody and so you know definitely take advantage of those opportunities if you have a child who is interested in STEM and you know they've they've got some great programming but I but I really want those opportunities to be accessible to everyone and I think that a lot of colleges and universities go out of their way to provide those opportunities you just kind of have to look around at the notices on library walls or look at the websites for those colleges to see what they're shouting out to like for instance I know in Princeton we have an amazing set of graduate students who are in charge of our own outreach program they're called M-M-Bop and they do such amazing events in the community whether it's like outside let's teach you how to make ice cream or let's isolate DNA from a strawberry doing microbes like at little LB plates which is the food that microbes grow on and you can grow the microbes from your hands just little little events out there that are especially when they're coming from colleges and universities are almost usually entirely free and they're there because we genuinely care about educating the next generation and we want students to be excited about science and to see themselves as scientists and to hopefully go down this path so I think that's sort of one area that would be that's really great to pursue and you may not think about it so I wanted to shout out to that but I know that many of the community colleges and colleges and universities at least in our area do this and I know many in Philadelphia which isn't too far away I'm sure New York has a ton but I really think wherever you are across the country try to take a look at what colleges and universities are offering in terms of these types of learning events Jody thank you so much for coming on the show I had asked you if there are any great online resources you would recommend for listeners who would like to learn more about some of these topics genes and phenotypes and model systems and you had suggested three resources I will link to them in the show notes do you want to say anything about them? Sure I'll give a brief shout out to each maybe for different reasons the first is the Learn Genetics Genetic Science Learning Center out from the University of Utah I will say I find this website so beautifully put together accessible for all ages and that I'm often finding myself grabbing a video or two to introduce some concept in class or as supplemental work and but I think it's it's geared really towards all ages so I think that one is a great one for anyone who's listening to to take a look at the next one is I HHMI Bio Interactive Material HHMI is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and they have wonderful programming for educators to grab to employ in a classroom but also those programs can be equally done by public citizens who are interested in want to work through some of those really fun sort of molecular biology snippets that I would say that are hugely informative and so just if you're having a lazy day and you feel like learning something new I think going through an HHMI Bio Interactive you can learn about lactose tolerance intolerance the genetics behind that but but many others the biology of skin color as well so I highly recommend and then the third is Ibiology Ibiology was put together by molecular really one particular molecular biologist who decided that there needed to be more outreach both to the scientific community and to the public and so it's Ibiology is a little bit at a higher level and so that's if you are a scientist and you're looking for a space to go and listen to some of the top notch scientists in their field who have gone to Ibiology and sort of recorded these amazing seminars so that they're accessible to everyone not that you have to go to a particular conference to hear this person speak but that it's right there for you and so you can go and listen to their talks there but for the from the perspective of the public you might want to go to Ibiology because they also do a phenomenal set of interviews with the biologists and I think just like you guys asked me about my path in science and how I ended up where I'm at you can go and listen to these Nobel Prize winners tell you about what their path in science was and what was it like doing those Nobel Prize winning discoveries and honestly scientists at their heart are just curious excited individuals and I love sitting down and just watching some of those interviews so that that's my that's sort of the final recommendation. Those are so great I'm so happy to know about them especially all these interviews wonderful. I'm glad Serena and Riley is there anything you would like to add or ask before we wrap up? I don't think so I think this is great it was so wonderful hearing from you. Yeah I agree with Riley it was great to meet you it's great to hear about your work and how teaching and research can be collaborative and just everything you do is amazing so thank you. Thanks Riley and Serena. Thank you Jody so much it was wonderful being here thanks for having me season. That was Jody Shuttonfeld Roams talking with us about genes and phenotypes model systems and her career in balancing teaching and research and with us were the guest hosts of BioBrayc Serena Bunken and Riley McVanus listeners please consider filling out a survey so we can continue to bring you great content you can find a link to the survey in the show notes of this podcast and you can also find it on the Instagram page the account is @sciencefairpodcast thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Science Fair please rate and review the episode on the podcast app of your choice see you next time.