THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIST

THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIST

Me speaking at Thompson Rivers University credit: Tayla Scott

At a party in the states, I discovered a linguistic difference between Canadians and the locals from the USA. In Canada when I said I did, people said “Eh?”. In the US, people said “Huh?”.  I realized that just saying I was a scientist was a pretty good way of stopping the conversation for a lot of people.

This is not surprising. If look at most people’s information about scientists, it is either a Hollywood or political viewpoint that is pretty skewed. In Hollywood, the scientist is usually a bit of a social outcast with a focus on some esoteric project that goes beyond reason. In politics, the scientist is often the fall guy, the one who says that climate changes is or is not occurring, that vaccine’s do or do not cause autism. These scientists are people with easy jobs, where they can work when they like, sit and think deep thoughts in quiet rooms, and have a job for life. Neither view is correct. We as scientists have failed in the past 50 years at communicating about the job of science. We have let stereotypes abound and let the public confidence in science wane.

For this reason, I appreciate being allowed a week of hosting the @realscientists site. Upulie Diviseker @upulie) and her colleagues (@DrSMMorgan, @sciencesarah, @theotherdrsmith, @reneewebs, @MCeeP, @ArukPrakash94, @JohnBorghi) had a good idea with this site that opens a window on the lives of real people that do research. Let’s work with them and with scientists and communicators to let people better understand the issues of a science career, and the importance of science in the lives of people and our planet. Here is my story.

I started as a scientist in my fourth year of my undergraduate. I took a research course with Dr. Randal at the University of British Columbia. His lab studied gas transport across the gills of aquatic species. At that time, Canada was considered a world leader in aquatic science and fish biology. Randal’s ion transport work led to basic science discoveries about the regulation of gas transfer across membranes that led to many discoveries about how species breath. My work was to study gas transport in the squishy sea cucumbers. I had to go out at low tide to collect them, figure out how to ensure their survival in the lab, learn how to operate the gas measuring devices and design a study. It was great being let loose in such a lab.

I worked long into the night and on most weekends in order to get a body of research done, while at the same time doing my undergraduate courses. Every week, the Zoology graduate program had a seminar where graduate students would present their work. It was after work on Wednesday. I didn’t think much about the hours I was putting in, because everyone worked long into the night. I now see that I was learning that science can be consuming as well as fascinating.

I knew that this work wouldn’t lead to a longer project and so I began thinking about where I might go in the future. I was going to take a year off to decide on a career path. I took a summer position with Dr. Burggren. He was studying gas exchange in the sturgeon- a large fresh water fish. A fun memory from that work was getting up at 4am to drive to the Fraser River. We had to work with local sport fisherman to get the gills of the fish just as they were caught. We had all of our surgical and perfusion equipment. We prepared the gills right on the muddy riverbank for histological analysis. This work involved scanning and electron microscopy—and so I picked up some new life experiences as well as cool new skills. This also led to my first publication: Burggren W, Dunn JF, and Barnard K. 1979. Branchial circulation and gill morphometrics in the sturgeon Acipenser transmontanus, an ancient Chondrosteian fish. Can J Zool 57: 2160-2170.

In my 4^th year of my undergraduate, I took a course from Peter Hochachka on the biochemical adaptations that species used to survive extreme environments--such as the bottom of the ocean or the tops of mountains. I became fascinated with this topic and so put an extra amount of effort into his course. I met him in the Zoology office early in the summer and asked how I did. He told me I got a great mark and, on the spur of the moment, I asked if I could work with him on a graduate degree. He said yes. My winter plans changed in a flash and I started graduate school in September. I wasn’t unsure about the goal, because I knew that I wanted to be a scientist. I was pretty surprised however, at how I ended up choosing a supervisor. I thought a lot more should go into that decision. It worked for me though. Peter was a great mentor.

Peter Hochachka with some of the many books he published

My graduate program skipped the MSc stage. My department had the belief that a MSc was a failed PhD—people would only get a masters if something went wrong. This obviously doesn’t hold for all fields but you do have to consider your long term goals when choosing a MSc or PhD path.

One of the exciting things about being in Peter’s lab is that everyone went on field trips. Some went to the Antarctic, some to the Amazon, some to Hawaii and I went to Kenya. I was studying how metabolism in the different organs of the body responded when the animal was exposed to low oxygen. For instance, low oxygen (hypoxia) metabolism results in a shift to a sugar based metabolism (anaerobic glycolysis) that has lactate as an end-product but does not use oxygen in the process. The sugar is stored in the body as glycogen. The highest concentrations are in the liver, but the muscle has the most glycogen in terms of amount per organ. When the body becomes hypoxic, glycogen is mobilized in liver and muscle to keep the heart and brain alive. It was at this time that a physiological response, called the “diving response” was being actively studied. It was noted that as a seal goes underwater, the blood supply was cut off from most of the body and dedicated to the heart, lung and brain. This was one aspect of many in the diving response. I was also looking at whether lower vertebrates already had this adaptation. To do this, I compared responses in animals that were known not to be hypoxia tolerant, with ones that should have a diving response. I compared rainbow trout with the African lungfish. The lungfish gets most of its oxygen from air-breathing and its gills are largely used for CO2 exchange. So when it is under water, it is holding its breath!

We found that the lungfish did have a diving response. We also found that it was good at shutting down metabolism. This led to the observation that the most effective method in the animal kingdom of surviving long term hypoxia was to reduce the metabolic rate. Two of my PhD related papers were focused on these subjects:  Dunn JF, Hochachka PW, Davison W, and Guppy M. 1983. Metabolic adjustments to diving and recovery in the African lungfish. Am J Physiol 245: R651-657.;  Hochachka PW and Dunn JF. 1983. Metabolic arrest: the most effective means of protecting tissues against hypoxia. Prog Clin Biol Res 136: 297-309.

During this period, I met Dr. I Johnston at a Zoology conference in Vancouver. He ran a lab in St. Andrews University in Scotland. He was interested in how species tolerated changes in temperature. Since reducing body temperature was the most accepted method of reducing metabolic rate, I thought it would be great if I could work with him for a post-doctoral position.

As I was cultivating that link, I made another big life decision. I married Moire the year before defending my PhD. Between the two of us, we didn’t have enough money to get a nice apartment and so we house sat. This was great—cheap on our pocketbook and we had a much nicer place to stay than we would otherwise.

In Canada, it was encouraged to leave the country to gain international research experience, and so going to Scotland had multiple benefits. Ian didn’t have funds for a Post-Doc, but Canada has a research agency called the National Science and Engineering Research Council that supported basic science. I was successful at getting salary funding from NSERC and Ian offered to pay the supply costs. (as a side note, NSERC is now being directed to supporting Canadian companies and so its basic science mandate is not as strong).

My wife and I flew to Scotland the day after defending my PhD. When I set up that schedule, I was confident of passing and of not having many corrections. It worked out for me but that was a stressful time. I would recommend giving yourself a few days (or weeks) to deal with the issues of defending. Just saying.

It was also an exciting time. I had not traveled much. Moire had relatives in Scotland that helped us out—a LOT. So a big thanks to the Bronte-Stewart clan.

While working with Ian I gained academic independence. He gave me a project and I worked on it. I didn’t see him a lot although we did do a study together early in the post-doc. We were both standing by the spectrophotometer measuring tissue metabolites from fish muscle. Working alongside your supervisor doesn’t happen often in case you were wondering.

Towards the end of my Post-doc, I had the opportunity to go with the British Antarctic Survey on an expedition to South Georgia and the Antarctic. I was based on the ship, the John Biscoe. That was a life experience! There were days with 100ft waves where the crew were wondering about our future. I played the pipes with the base commander of the British military garrison on South Georgia. This was soon after the Falklands war.  We walked from the ship to the garrison on S. Georgia through a blizzard on Christmas eve. I was playing the pipes while walking to help keep everyone together. We walked among elephant seals. We also worked long hours collecting marine samples and analyzing them for muscle structure and biochemical adaptations. Included in publications from that time are: Dunn JF, Archer SD, and Johnston IA. 1989. Muscle fibre types and metabolism in post-larval and adult stages of Notothenioid fish. Polar Biol 9: 213-223. Johnston IA and Dunn JF. 1987. Temperature acclimation and metabolism in ectotherms with particular reference to teleost fish. Soc Exp Biol Symp 41: 67-93.

But…what next? I had an opportunity to go to Mt. Alison University in New Brunswick for a year to teach and do muscle research. Moire had had enough of living in a tiny town without a job. I realized that most universities wouldn’t pay to recruit from the UK and so my ability to get an academic job in Canada relied on me getting back and getting known. With the internet and more travel geography isn’t as much of a limitation as it was then. So I accepted the job and was planning to move in September. At the same time, I came home and showed Moire a job at Oxford with a well known scientist, Dr. G.K. Radda. He was pioneering NMR as a tool to study metabolism in muscle. I was a muscle biochemist.

Unfortunately I had already taken another job. Well, that train of thought didn’t fly with Moire. Let’s see—Oxford, Mt Alison, Oxford, Mt Alison. Ok, no brainer. Call Dr. Radda—which I did. He was interested, but the earliest he could interview me was the date I was to fly to the new job. I had to phone my employer and explain the options. He was understanding and I delayed my flight. George gave the job immediately and we moved to Oxford a few weeks later—driving down the M1 in the driving rain and having the car break down on route..another story.

 

Sir George Radda, one of the founders of in vivo NMR/MRI

Oxford defined me as a scientist. I worked with George’s group and became a senior research scientist at the Medical Research Council. I learned NMR from Peter Stys. I studied different conditions such as muscular dystrophy, cancer metabolism, cardiac failure, diabetes and exercise. After a few years, my peers considered me an MR scientist. I always wanted to publish in the same journal as Darwin published—the Proceedings of the Royal Society. This led to: Dunn JF, Tracey I, and Radda GK. 1993. Exercise metabolism in Duchenne muscular dystrophy: a biochemical and [31P]-nuclear magnetic resonance study of mdx mice. Proc Royal Sci 251: 201-206. Irene Tracey was my first PhD student. Irene went on to lead Oxfords premier neuro-MRI centre—FMRIB: www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk.

 

A faded picture, but a happy memory of punting on the Cherwell with Irene Tracy, now Dr. Tracy, Director of FMRIB in Oxford

Oxford was not a permanent stint. I needed to find a position where I would have a bit more job security and so I began hunting. Mostly I talked to people. The job I finally got, in the Department of Radiology at Dartmouth Medical School, was through word of mouth. They had money. I had experience. They wanted a “world class MRI facility to do animal research”. I could do MRI and had lots of experience working with animals. This period is when my research focus became more clinically directed vs. being more basic biochemistry.

Unfortunately, when I was to leave Oxford was during a house price crash in the UK. We couldn’t afford to sell the house. Moire stayed behind for a year working on her job while I worked at Dartmouth in Hanover New Hampshire, designing new lab space, and sourcing and installing what may have been North America’s first 7T horizontal bore animal system.

The Dartmouth time was great for us. The science was fantastic, the students were great. I had tremendous academic freedom. I was able to publish widely. My close collaborator, Dr. H. Swartz, was extremely supportive. My Dept. Chair, Peter Spiegel was also very supportive of both basic and clinical research. Both our boys were born there. I might still be there but, with a family, I had to think about long term issues. The USA was going to war. The NIH budget was certain to be cut. My mother could not come and visit any more as she couldn’t get travel insurance due to her age. Dartmouth has a good retention policy for tenure staff but most of my money still came from grants. I might have a job, but if I lost my grant the salary wouldn’t cover the mortgage.

I wasn’t actively looking. There was a job at the University of British Columbia I was trying to get that had been simmering for a few years. It was a random act that led to my  learning about the University of Calgary position. I was coming through Calgary for a conference and contacted some colleagues to ask if I could give a talk. They set up a job interview as well. In the end, I was offered a position at UBC and Calgary in the same week. That warranted a nice bottle of wine—but required a significant life decision to be made. We decided on Calgary. Here I am.

My lab in Calgary has similar goals as to the one I ran at Dartmouth. We have very high end MRI tools and capabilities. This is the first 9.4T horizontal bore animal system in Canada.  I’ve developed an additional imaging capability in near-infrared spectroscopy to study tissue oxygen levels in disease. The University has many exceptional people that can use imaging for their work. As a result, I have many excellent collaborators. I’ve been fortunate to have continuous funding and so I’m still actively doing research. Much of what I do uses animal models. We also translate new ideas to human use. A few weeks ago we had a paper published on brain MRI in an animal model of Multiple Sclerosis. Last week, I had a paper published where we developed a new optical imaging method for assessing concussion in children. 

My affiliations reflect the broad work I do. I'm a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute @hotchkissbrain, the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute @UofCr4kids, and the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health @McCaiginstitute-- all at the University of Calgary.

My work touches many disorders and, unlike medical doctors, I’m not limited to one species! My “science” and life decisions were sometimes spontaneous, and sometimes took months of soul searching. For much of the time, money was tight. At no time did I think I had a cushy job for life where I could sit back and just drink beer with the students. I believe my job is to teach as well as to do research, and so many of my supervisory decisions involve identifying what is good for the student as well as for my lab. I hope my blogs will entertain as well as provide interesting information on how research is useful to your life, to our culture, our species and our planet.