Andy Dillin: Using aging research to probe biology

A s time passes, cells accumulate damage to genetic, protein, and lipid components, causing cellular aging and eventually death. Cells have extensive damage-mitigation pathways , but just what these pathways are, and how and when they operate, is still under investigation. Andy Dillin is fascinated by these questions, but came to studying them in a roundabout way. He got his fi rst taste of research in Ardythe McCracken's lab at the University of Nevada, Reno (1), and developed an addiction to science that only grew during his graduate studies in genetics with Jasper Rine's group at Berkeley (2). He found his true obsession after joining Cynthia Kenyon's lab, where he leveraged the power of C. elegans to explore the connection between metabolism and aging (3). Dillin's own lab at the Salk Research Institute is working to understand how the cellular pathways that affect the rate of aging are triggered and integrated (4, 5). We sat down with him in his offi ce overlooking the Pacifi c Ocean to chat about young scientists and aging cells. What got you interested in science? I grew up in Reno, and my high school chemistry teacher there, Mr. Wilcox, is the person who turned me on to science. I was failing every other class, but he took me under his wing and showed me that I could actually be a good student. I guess from then on I always knew I wanted to do science. As an undergraduate, I got a job as a technician and research assistant in Ar-dythe McCraken's lab at the University of Reno, Nevada. When I joined her lab, Ardythe was transitioning from tissue culture to yeast. We were all wrestling with this bizarre phenomenon where we would put an unfolded protein into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and it would get degraded in the cytosol. I worked on this as my undergraduate thesis, and fi g-ured out some of the mechanism. But it wasn't until after I left that Ardythe and her graduate student, Eric Werner, really fi g-ured it out. They, along with Jeff Brodsky at Pittsburgh, are the ones who coined the term ERAD (ER-associated degradation), which of course is widely used now. Ardythe's a great mentor. She showed me that you can have a balanced lifestyle and do great science. You can be at a small university and make an impact on the bigger world. So graduate …