Kenneth Yamada: Exploring the paths of cell migration

K enneth Yamada's interest in cell movements began as a PhD student with Norman Wessells at Stanford University in the late 1960s, where he studied the contribution of actin fi laments and microtubules to axon growth (1). As a postdoc with James Weston at the University of Oregon and then with Ira Pastan at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, Yamada characterized fi bronectin (2)—a key component of the extracellular matrix with roles in cell adhesion, migration, and morphogenesis. Yamada has maintained an interest in all three of these fi elds during his 30 years as an investigator at the National Institutes of Health. In that time, he's taken his research into new dimensions—studying adhesion and migration in 3D (3) and, more recently, 1D models (4). He has also used different systems to investigate branching morphogenesis (5), a developmental process that can be recapitulated in vitro with isolated salivary gland cells (6). When asked to name his favorite publication, Yamada demurs, saying that it would be like having to choose his favorite child. That sense of fairness is refl ected in Yamada's service on the NIH's scientifi c conduct and ethics committee, where he educates researchers on the dangers of image manipulation (7). In a recent interview, Yamada explained how curiosity and luck have guided him through a long and successful research career. What were your earliest experiences in science? My father was a research technician who became a physician. We actually kept my father's lab's guinea pigs in a large bank of cages at our house. Those were the days before animal care committees, so those lab animals were my fi rst exposure to science. But I've always been very curious— I tend to plunge immediately into a topic because it intrigues me, without fi guring out an endpoint. For example, when I was a pre-schooler I wanted to understand how door locks worked. I carefully took apart our house locks, but then couldn't reassemble them, to the disapproval of my parents! What would you be if not a scientist? Maybe I was born in the wrong century, but I think I should have been an explorer. I guess the equivalent now might be a wildlife photographer. I really like photography , so that might've been it. You did an MD-PhD. Did you intend to practice medicine at one point? It was a very diffi cult choice between …