Alison Frand: Breaking out new ideas on molting

T he nematode worm, C. elegans, sheds its exoskeleton at particular life stages, and Alison Frand believes that understanding this molting process might provide new insights into diseases affecting humans. Some of the potential medical benefi ts lie in the similarities between the worms' exoskeleton and our own skin and connective tissues, while other benefits might lie in the unique aspects of worm molting. Frand loves worms. But this love affair didn't start until her postdoc years in Gary Ruvkun's lab. Before that, as a Ph.D. student at MIT, she was happily married to protein disulfi de bond formation in yeast (1–3). Then, in Ruvkun's lab at Harvard, she worked on a landmark study using a reverse genetic screen to identify and characterize the genes involved in worm molting (4). And there was no looking back. Now, armed with the results of that screen, Frand is continuing her work on molting at UCLA (5), where she heads her own lab. We pinned her down to ask about how she, as a young scientist, shed her protein biologist skin and became interested in molting. What fi rst got you interested in science? I fi rst got interested in science in middle school. I had a teacher named Sharon Sicher, who mentored a whole group of students in an after-school science program. Then, in high school, I had another mentor, Dr. William Ritter. The dedication of these teachers really nurtured my interest in science and my sense that it was a rewarding endeavor and something I wanted to keep doing. Were you always interested in a career in biology? Always biology. And I think my experiences have really built on each other. First, I was interested in marine invertebrate zoology—in high school, I thought I wanted to study water bugs. Then, as a biology major at Cornell, I did an undergraduate project on translation in mito-chondria with Tom Fox. Working in Tom's lab prepared me to work on protein folding at MIT, and I think the work at MIT prepared me to develop an independent project on the molting cycle in my post-doc. All along, I was fortunate in fi nding really great training environments and really outstanding mentors. What draws you to doing research? I have such a sense of joy at my bench. I like to form hypotheses and test them. I like to see the data, to know whether …