Category: Building 68

Little picture, large revelations

A summer intensive using microscopy to study a unique type of yeast was a dream come true for BSG-MSRP-Bio student Adryanne Gonzalez.

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
September 11, 2025

For Adryanne Gonzalez, studying yeast using microscopy at MIT this summer has been a dream come true. 

“Whatever world we’re living in, there’s an even smaller one,” Gonzalez says. “Knowing and understanding the smaller one can help us learn about the bigger stuff, and I think that’s so fascinating.” 

Gonzalez was part of the Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould MIT Summer Research Program in Biology, working in the Lew Lab this summer. The program offers talented undergraduates from institutions with limited research opportunities at their home institutions the chance to spend 10 weeks at MIT, where they gain experience, hone skills, and create the types of connections with potential collaborators and future colleagues that are critical for success in academia. 

Gonzalez was so excited about the opportunity that she didn’t apply for any other summer programs.  

“I really wanted to work on becoming more independent in the lab, and this program was research-intensive, and you get to lead your own project,” she says. “It was this or nothing.”

two people standing at a bench in front of a computer
Adryanne Gonzalez, right, with her mentor, Lew Lab graduate student Clara Fikry, left. Gonzalez spent the summer studying Aureobasidium pullulans, a type of yeast that produces large, root-like networks. Photo credit: Mandana Sassanfar/MIT Department of Biology

The fun of science & the rigors of mentoring

The Lew Lab works with two different specimens: a model baker’s yeast that multiplies by producing a round growth called a bud that eventually separates into a separate, daughter cell; and Aureobasidium pullulans, which is unusual because it can create multiple buds at the same time, and can also spread in large networks of branching, rootlike growths called hyphae. A. pullulans is an emerging model system, meaning that researchers are still defining what normal growth and behavior is for the fungus, like how it senses and responds to obstacles, and how resources and molecular machinery are allocated to its branching structures.  

“I’m really interested in all the diversity of biology that we don’t get to study if we’re only focused on the model species,” says Clara Fikry, a graduate student in the Lew Lab and Gonzalez’s mentor for the summer. 

On the mentoring side, Fikry learned how to balance providing a rigorous workload while not overwhelming her mentee with information. 

“Science should be fun,” Fikry says. “The goal of this isn’t to produce as much data as possible; it’s to learn what the process of science is like.”

Although her day-to-day work was with Fikry, Gonzalez also received guidance from Daniel Lew himself. For example, his advice was invaluable for honing a draft of her research statement for potential graduate school applications, which she’d previously written as part of a class assignment.

“It was an assignment where I needed to hit a page count, and he pointed out that I kind of wrote the same thing three times in the first paragraph,” she shares with a laugh. He helped her understand that “when you’re writing something professionally, you want your writing to be concise and understandable to a broad spectrum of readers.” 

Life in the cohort

The BSG-MSRP-Bio program gives undergraduate students a taste of what the day-to-day life of graduate school might feel like, from balancing one’s workload and reading research papers to learning new techniques and troubleshooting when experiments don’t go as planned. Gonzalez recalls that the application process felt very “adult” and “professional” because she was responsible for reaching out to the faculty member of the lab she was interested in on her own behalf, rather than going through a program intermediary. 

Gonzalez is one of just three students from Massachusetts participating in the program this year—the program draws students from across the globe to study at MIT. 

Every student also arrives with different levels of experience, from Gonzalez, who can only work in a lab during the school year about once a week, to Calo Lab student Adriana Camacho-Badillo, who is in her third consecutive summer in the program, and continuing work on a project she began last year.

“We’re all different levels of novice, and we’re coming together, and we’re all really excited about research,” Gonzalez says.

Gonzalez is a Gould Fellow, supported at MIT through the generous donations of Mike Gould and Sara Moss. The program funding was initiated in 2015 to honor the memory of Gould’s parents, Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould. Gould and Moss take the time to come to campus and meet the students they’re supporting every year. 

“You don’t often get to meet the person that’s helping you,” Gonzalez said. “They were so warm and welcoming, and at the end, when they were giving everyone a nice, firm handshake, Mike Gould said, ‘Make sure you keep going. Don’t give up,’ which was so sweet.” 

Gonzalez is also supported by Cedar Tree, a Boston-based family foundation that primarily funds local environmental initiatives. In the interest of building a pipeline for future scientists with potential interest in the environmental sciences and beyond, Cedar Tree recently established a grant program for local high school and undergraduate students pursuing STEM research and training opportunities. 

Gonzalez discusses her summer research with attendees of the poster session that serves as the culmination of the 10-week summer research intensive for talented non-MIT undergraduate students from around the world. Photo credit: Lillian Eden/MIT Department of Biology.

Preparing for the future

The BSG-MSRP-Bio program culminates with a lively poster session where students present their summer projects to the MIT community—the first time some students are presenting their data to the public in that format.

Although the program is aimed at students who foresee a career in academia, the majority of students who participate are uncertain about the specific field, organism, or process they’ll eventually want to study during a PhD program. For Gonzalez, the program has helped her feel more prepared for the potential rigors of academic research.

“I think the hardest thing about this program is convincing yourself to apply,” she says. “Don’t let that hinder you from exploring opportunities that may seem out of reach.” 

3 Questions: Mariely Morales Burgos on the BSG-MSRP-Bio program

Undergraduate student and Gould Fellow discusses choosing a summer research lab, living in the Greater Boston Area, and managing imposter syndrome.

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
August 28, 2025

Mariely Morales Burgos first fell in love with MIT while participating in the Quantitative Methods Workshop, a weeklong intensive offered in January to prepare students to analyze data in biology and neuroscience. Those skills have come in handy this summer while participating in the Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould MIT Summer Research Program in Biology (BSG-MSRP-Bio), a ten-week training program for non-MIT undergraduate students interested in pursuing an academic career.

A Gould Fellow and McNair Scholar, Morales Burgos spent the summer mentored by Associate Professor of Biology Eliezer Calo, for whom the program served as a critical stepping stone in his own career. Calo is the first BSG-MSRP-Bio program alum to receive tenure at MIT. 

A rising senior at the University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla, Morales Burgos spent the summer using zebrafish to study the molecular machinery responsible for making proteins. 

Three people standing in an interior lab space smiling at the camera
(from right to left) Mariely Morales Burgos, mentor and Associate Professor of Biology Eliezer Calo, and Adriana Camacho-Badillo in the lab at MIT. Camacho-Badillo, a returning BSG-MSRP-Bio student, encouraged Morales Burgos to apply for the program. Photo Credit: Mandana Sassanfar/MIT Department of Biology.

Q: How did you select your lab, and what have you been working on?

A: I knew I wanted to work in Eliezer’s lab after meeting him during a QMW faculty lunch. I felt like we really connected because of his genuine passion for science, commitment to his trainees, and the way he spoke about his lab and the care he puts into mentoring. 

My research focuses on ribosomes, which are the protein factories of the cell, and they’re essential to make what the cell needs to go through different developmental stages and through its most crucial processes. In early development, zebrafish and numerous other organisms depend on maternally deposited ribosomes and associated molecular components inherited directly from the oocyte. As time goes on, their own genomes activate, and they start being able to make their own ribosomes. What I’m studying is this transition from maternal to zygotic ribosomes during early development. We know this transition happens, but we don’t know how this transition is regulated, whether it happens passively, through dilution, or actively, through targeted cellular mechanisms.  

One skill that I’ve been able to learn here, other than just learning and applying techniques, is how to develop a whole project independently, how to think critically about the next step of my project, and what other questions I can ask.

Being able to work with a live animal organism and see the developmental stages in real-time, I thought that was really cool. And it really makes me appreciate the beauty of developmental biology, and just life in general.

Q: How did you prepare for the program, and what has it been like living and working in Boston and Cambridge? As a Gould Fellow, you also met with program supporters Mike Gould and Sara Moss, who established the Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould fund to honor the memory of Mike’s parents. What was it like to meet and talk to Mike and Sara? 

A: Once we get accepted, we’re encouraged to start communication with our faculty. I had a few meetings with Eliezer to discuss some papers, and based on our discussion and the expectations for the project, I was able to read more and start preparing before I arrived.

Every few weeks beforehand, we had a meeting with Mandana and the rest of the cohort on Zoom, and we were talking on an app called GroupMe, and we exchanged socials, so when we came here, we weren’t complete, total strangers. 

When I’m not in the lab, I spend a lot of time with my roommates, and we like walking around Boston. It’s a very walkable city and has a lot of unique architecture, but Boston weather is very unpredictable. I’m from a tropical island, so I wish someone had told me to prepare for the rain and cold, but the July weather has been so nice. 

In Puerto Rico, you don’t have public transportation, so I’ve really enjoyed commuting. Our dorms are at Northeastern, so I take the bus, and it goes over the Charles, and it’s so beautiful. 

I’m a person who feels a lot of emotions, so I was the only one who cried when we met the Goulds. It was a bit embarrassing, but that’s okay. They told me to never lose the empathy that I have, no matter how hard my journey is, to keep on holding on to my sentimental side and keep working hard, and they’re so excited to see where we end up and what we end up doing.

Mariely Morales Burgos standing in front of a paper poster, indicating a certain point of data to three people
The summer research intensive culminated in a lively poster session. Photo Credit: Lillian Eden/MIT Department of Biology

Q: This program’s aim is to make research available for students who don’t have access to hands-on experience at their home institutions, so many students, including you, are embarking on independent research projects for the first time, which could trigger “imposter syndrome.” What was that experience like for you, and what advice would you give to future BSG-MSRP-Bio program participants? 

A: I was a little bit intimidated by the program, and didn’t apply the first time I had the opportunity. Then I did the Quantitative Methods Workshop, and those eight days were beautiful. I got to see how everybody loves collaborating and that the community here is very supportive. I met many wonderful faculty who were passionate about their research, and that exposure made me realize I would love to be part of a place like this. 

Imposter syndrome is something that I feel like most everybody deals with, but MSRP is a place that, if you’re willing to put in the work, everyone is willing to help you reach the places that you dream of being. It might feel intimidating to ask questions, and you could be scared of feeling like you don’t deserve to be in these spaces. But somebody who wants you to grow will answer your questions. I wanted to be able to work independently as soon as possible, because that really showcases your abilities, but no matter what, Eliezer, who’s mentoring me, his door is always open. 

What I advise is to really dive into your project and take advantage of everything this program offers. Working hard on your project, you get to fall in love with the process and the questions you’re trying to answer and science as a whole, and there’s nothing better than to spend the summer on a project that you love.

Can bacteria be used to clean up oil spills?

The Drennan Lab is working on insights into how nature performs challenging chemistry in oxygen-free environments, with potential applications for remediation, such as cleaning up oil spills, in situations where traditional approaches are ineffective.

Produced by Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
August 28, 2025

Can bacteria clean up oil spills? The short answer: no. Or, at least, not yet.

The Drennan Lab is working to understand how bacteria perform incredible, radical chemistry on inert compounds. Inert compounds, like those that make up crude oil, are challenging to break down because they contain very stable chains of carbon and hydrogen (hydrocarbons). Some microbes have special enzymes that attach another compound to these long, hydrocarbon chains, which makes it possible for the previously inert compound to be degraded. 

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the Drennan Lab recently determined the three-dimensional structure of a glycyl radical enzyme that catalyzes the formation of carbon-carbon bonds, outlined in a recent paper published in PNAS.

This work provides insights into how nature performs challenging chemistry in oxygen-free environments and has potential applications for remediation, such as cleaning up oil spills, in situations where traditional approaches are ineffective. 

This research was led by former postdoc Mary C. Andorfer, who will continue to explore the power of anaerobic microbes as an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Catherine Drennan is a Professor of Biology and Chemistry at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. 

Can a pill help you live longer? The science behind NAD and longevity

MIT professor, Dr. Leonard Guarente, conducts research into sirtuin genes and the power of a molecule called NAD.

WCVB
July 22, 2025

It might sound too good to be true: a pill that could help you live a longer, healthier life. But Leonard Guarente, a longtime MIT biologist, believes the idea holds promise.

Guarente, the Novartis Professor of Biology at MIT, has spent more than 40 years studying the science of aging. He started small, working with yeast cells.

“We decided to look for genes that could make yeast live longer,” he said. That’s when a gene called SIR2 caught his attention. Boosting SIR2 activity helped yeast cells live longer—and when the same effect was observed in roundworms, Guarente turned his attention to humans.

Humans, it turns out, have seven genes similar to SIR2. Collectively, these are called sirtuins, a group of proteins essential to cell health. According to Guarente, sirtuins help power cells, repair damage, and regulate which genes are turned on or off.

Guarente says sirtuins need NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) to stay active, but NAD levels naturally decline as we get older.

“If we could restore NAD levels in an older person back to youthful levels, we thought that would do a lot of good,” he explained.

That idea became the foundation for Elysium Health, a company Guarente co-founded. Some critics question the ethics of a scientist selling supplements based on his own research, but Guarente stands by the rigor of his approach. “We ended up with eight Nobel Prize winners on the board,” he noted.

Of course, whether restoring NAD levels leads to longer life is still uncertain. “A person who is very healthy might not notice much initially because where is there to go?” Guarente explained. “But what about in 30 years? There’s no way to answer that question right now.”

A shining light in the lab

Sriram “Sri” Srikant was known for insightful questions and irrepressible love of the pursuit of knowledge.

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
July 24, 2025

Sriram “Sri” Srikant, a postdoctoral Scholar in the Laub Lab in the Department of Biology at MIT, succumbed to cancer in March. He was 35.

Srikant received a degree in Chemical Engineering with a minor in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2011, and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University in 2019. Among many accomplishments, Srikant was awarded an HHMI International Student Research Fellowship and a Peralta Prize for an outstanding dissertation proposal, both in 2013.

Srikant is described by mentors and colleagues alike as brilliant — a remarkable researcher who was both knowledgeable and approachable and whose enthusiasm was a bright beacon to all who had the chance to know him.

“There’s a blues line that I love, ‘Let the Midnight Special shine the ever lovin’ light on me,’” says Harvard College Professor Andrew Murray, one of Srikant’s thesis advisors. “For me, Sri was that Midnight Special, and we were lucky to have his ever lovin’ light shine on us.”

Academics are often equally motivated by a mix of a love of the work and a desire to succeed, whether it be by publications, grants, or high-impact findings. According to colleagues, however, Srikant’s passion came entirely from his need to know more.

“He told me once that ‘A life without science wouldn’t be worth living,’” said Dia Ghose, PhD ’24, a graduate student in the Laub Lab. “He wanted to move his career forward so he could keep doing science, but he didn’t care about impressing people. He just loved science and wanted to keep doing it.”

In the face of a terminal diagnosis, Srikant kept coming into the lab until his illness made it impossible. His marks on Building 68, however, remain — people are and will continue using the strains he built, the technique he developed, and the expertise he was so generous in sharing.

“There’s so many reminders of him, which is how it should be, because he contributed so much,” Ghose says. “He’s living on in the lab, and we’re still using everything that he gave us every day.”

The generosity of Sri Standard Time

As a graduate student at Harvard, Srikant pursued his thesis work in a joint PhD in the labs of both Murray and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Rachelle Gaudet.

“The experiments in Rachelle’s lab failed utterly, and those in mine failed miserably, but gave enough glimmers of possibility for him to make a series of technical innovations to turn something that looked hopeless into a very nice paper,” recalls Murray. “There was no part of science he wasn’t curious about, there was nothing he wouldn’t discuss, and there was no technical challenge he wouldn’t take on.”

In the Laub Lab, Srikant developed an experimental evolution approach to studying phage, the viruses that infect bacteria. Srikant set up an experimental pipeline to explore how phages can evolve to overcome anti-phage defense systems in bacteria. He was also investigating the broader mechanisms of how phage genomes evolve, and the types of mutations they acquire. In the case of recombination between co-infecting phages, he was developing a new methodology to study exactly how recombination between different phages occurs.

The experimental evolution approach swept through not just the lab at MIT but across the world, and Srikant assisted other labs in implementing his process.

“He was this incredibly selfless, generous guy who was always willing to help out other people,” says Michael Laub, Salvador E. Luria Professor and HHMI Investigator. “He also had this incredible encyclopedic knowledge and memory about all aspects of phages, and he was constantly drawing on that to help people with their projects.”

Srikant was so generous with his time and expertise that he was usually on “SST” or “Sri standard time”—which was, often, running late. He would declare he was heading out or needed to start experiments, and then engage in hours-long conversations with lab mates on topics ranging from physics to visa issues.

Srikant’s hobbies included reading papers from other fields — he was, simply put, interested in the pursuit of knowledge. If he wasn’t an expert on some topic, he could spend hours studying it, just in case he could be helpful. After ChatGPT was released, lab mates joked that ChatGP-Sri was more knowledgeable, had more reliable answers, and was usually available 24/7, says Tong Zhang, PhD ’24, another graduate student in the Laub Lab.

Srikant’s sole area of ignorance was seemingly was pop culture. He didn’t know who Taylor Swift was, and only knew of Lady Gaga from the one time she wore a meat dress more than a decade ago—which, Ghose noted, was a rather niche reference.

Always curious, never quiet

Murray recalls an incident when he was flying from Boston to San Francisco with Srikant, discussing science every minute of the flight. Srikant was so passionate about the subject that his neighbor felt the need to shush him repeatedly, which Srikant took in stride, saying, with a smile, “People have been telling me to be quieter my entire life, and they’re probably right!”

From his first year at Harvard to his final days in the Laub Lab, Srikant was known for his boundless curiosity. Murray says that it’s a rare thing, after a department seminar, for students to ask questions, but Srikant would always put his hand up. That habit continued through graduate school and at science and lab meetings during his too-brief time at MIT.

“It was remarkable,” Laub says. “After any talk, he always had the most probing, incisive, and really helpful questions, across very broad fields.”

Every time he asked a question, whether it was in class during his time at Harvard or at the Building 68 research retreat on the cape, Srikant would begin with, “One of the things I’m curious about.” Ghose says the phrase became something akin to a meme in the lab, and Srikant even commemorated the colloquialism with a bracelet that read ‘I’m curious.’

“For a person that brilliant and knowledgeable, Sri was so special. His impact on me and others will last forever,” Zhang says. “I have always been, and I will continue, looking up to him, honoring his passion for science, his brilliance as a scientist, and his kindness and generosity as a great friend.”

Staff Spotlight: Lighting up biology’s basement lab

Senior Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung ’02 brings the energy, experience, and excitement needed to educate students in the biology teaching lab.

Samantha Edelen | Department of Biology
April 29, 2025

For more than 30 years, Course 7 (Biology) students have descended to the expansive, windowless basement of Building 68 to learn practical skills that are the centerpiece of undergraduate biology education at the Institute. The lines of benches and cabinets of supplies that make up the underground MIT Biology Teaching Lab could easily feel dark and isolated.

In the corner of this room, however, sits Senior Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung ’02, who manages to make the space seem sunny and communal.

“We joke that we could rig up a system of mirrors to get just enough daylight to bounce down from the stairwell,” Cheung says with a laugh. “It is a basement, but I am very lucky to have this teaching lab space. It is huge and has everything we need.”

This optimism and gratitude fostered by Cheung is critical, as MIT undergrad students enrolled in classes 7.002 (Fundamentals of Experimental Molecular Biology) and 7.003 (Applied Molecular Biology Laboratory) spend four-hour blocks in the lab each week, learning the foundations of laboratory technique and theory for biological research from Cheung and her colleagues.

Running toward science education

Cheung’s love for biology can be traced back to her high school cross country and track coach, who also served as her second-year biology teacher. The sport and the fundamental biological processes she was learning about in the classroom were, in fact, closely intertwined.

“He told us about how things like ATP [adenosine triphosphate] and the energy cycle would affect our running,” she says. “Being able to see that connection really helped my interest in the subject.”

That inspiration carried her through a move from her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to pursue an undergraduate degree at MIT, and through her thesis work to earn a PhD in genetics at Harvard Medical School. She didn’t leave running behind either: To this day, she can often be found on the Charles River Esplanade, training for her next marathon.

She discovered her love of teaching during her PhD program. She enjoyed guiding students so much that she spent an extra semester as a teaching assistant, outside of the one required for her program.

“I love research, but I also really love telling people about research,” Cheung says.

Cheung herself describes lab instruction as the “best of both worlds,” enabling her to pursue her love of teaching while spending every day at the bench, doing experiments. She emphasizes for students the importance of being able not just to do the hands-on technical lab work, but also to understand the theory behind it.

“The students can tend to get hung up on the physical doing of things — they are really concerned when their experiments don’t work,” she says. “We focus on teaching students how to think about being in a lab — how to design an experiment and how to analyze the data.”

Although her talent for teaching and passion for science led her to the role, Cheung doesn’t hesitate to identify the students as her favorite part of the job.

“It sounds cheesy, but they really do keep the job very exciting,” she says.

Using mind and hand in the lab

Cheung is the type of person who lights up when describing how much she “loves working with yeast.”

“I always tell the students that maybe no one cares about yeast except me and like three other people in the world, but it is a model organism that we can use to apply what we learn to humans,” Cheung explains.

Though mastering basic lab skills can make hands-on laboratory courses feel “a bit cookbook,” Cheung is able to get the students excited with her enthusiasm and clever curriculum design.

“The students like things where they can get their own unique results, and things where they have a little bit of freedom to design their own experiments,” she says. So, the lab curriculum incorporates opportunities for students to do things like identify their own unique yeast mutants and design their own questions to test in a chemical engineering module.

Part of what makes theory as critical as technique is that new tools and discoveries are made frequently in biology, especially at MIT. For example, there has been a shift from a focus on RNAi to CRISPR as a popular lab technique in recent years, and Cheung muses that CRISPR itself may be overshadowed within only a few more years — keeping students learning at the cutting edge of biology is always on Cheung’s mind.

“Vanessa is the heart, soul, and mind of the biology lab courses here at MIT, embodying ‘mens et manus’ [‘mind and hand’],” says technical lab instructor and Biology Teaching Lab Manager Anthony Fuccione.

Support for all students

Cheung’s ability to mentor and guide students earned her a School of Science Dean’s Education and Advising Award in 2012, but her focus isn’t solely on MIT undergraduate students.

In fact, according to Cheung, the earlier students can be exposed to science, the better. In addition to her regular duties, Cheung also designs curriculum and teaches in the LEAH Knox Scholars Program. The two-year program provides lab experience and mentorship for low-income Boston- and Cambridge-area high school students.

Paloma Sanchez-Jauregui, outreach programs coordinator who works with Cheung on the program, says Cheung has a standout “growth mindset” that students really appreciate.

“Vanessa teaches students that challenges — like unexpected PCR results — are part of the learning process,” Sanchez-Jauregui says. “Students feel comfortable approaching her for help troubleshooting experiments or exploring new topics.”

Cheung’s colleagues report that they admire not only her talents, but also her focus on supporting those around her. Technical Instructor and colleague Eric Chu says Cheung “offers a lot of help to me and others, including those outside of the department, but does not expect reciprocity.”

Professor of biology and co-director of the Department of Biology undergraduate program Adam Martin says he “rarely has to worry about what is going on in the teaching lab.” According to Martin, Cheung is ”flexible, hard-working, dedicated, and resilient, all while being kind and supportive to our students. She is a joy to work with.”

Staff Spotlight: Always looking to home

Mingmar Sherpa, a researcher in the Martin Lab in the Department of Biology, has remained connected to his home in Nepal at every step of his career.

Ekaterina Khalizeva | Department of Biology
April 29, 2025

For Mingmar Sherpa, a senior research support associate in the Martin Lab in the Department of Biology, community is more than just his colleagues in the lab, where he studies how mechanical forces affect cell division timing during embryogenesis. On his long and winding path to MIT, he never left behind the people he grew up among in Nepal. Sherpa has been dedicated, every step of his career — from rural Solukhumbu to Kathmandu to Alabama to Cambridge — to advancing education and health care among his people in any way he can.

Despite working more than 7,000 miles away from home, Mingmar Sherpa makes every effort to keep himself connected to his community in Nepal. Every month, for example, he sends home money to support a computer lab that he established in his hometown in rural Solukhumbu, the district of Nepal that houses Mount Everest — just $250 a month covers the costs of a teacher’s salary, electricity, internet, and a space to teach. In this lab, almost 250 students thus far have learned computer skills essential to working in today’s digitally driven world. In college, Sherpa also started The Bright Vision Foundation (The Bright Future), an organization to support health and education in Nepal, and during the pandemic raised funds to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and health care services across his home country.

While Sherpa’s ambition to help his home can be traced back to his childhood, he didn’t have it all figured out from the start, and found inspiration at each step of his career.

“This mindset of giving back to the community, helping policymakers or establishing an organization to help people do science, helping the scientific community to find cures for diseases — all these ideas came to me along the way,” Sherpa says. “It is the journey that matters.”

A journey driven by hope and optimism

“Sherpa” is a reference to the ethnic group native to the mountainous regions of Nepal and Tibet, whose members are well-known for their mountaineering skills, which they use to guide and assist tourists who want to climb Mount Everest. Growing up in rural Solukhumbu, Sherpa was surrounded by people working in the tourism industry; few other occupations appeared feasible. There was just one hospital for the whole district, requiring locals to walk for days to get medical assistance.

The youngest of seven siblings, Sherpa went to an English-language middle school, which he had to walk for over an hour to get to. He excelled there, soon becoming the top student in his class and passing the national exam with distinction — success that allowed him to both dream of and accomplish a move to Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, to study in the best school in the country.

It was an overwhelming transition, surrounded as he was for the first time by people from a very different social class, privileged with far more technological resources. The gaps between this well-equipped community and the one he left back home became increasingly obvious and left a strong impression on Sherpa.

There, he started thinking about how to use his newly acquired access to education and technology to uplift his community at home. He was especially fascinated by questions surrounding biology and human health, and next set his sights on attending college in the United States.

“If I came to the U.S., I could learn skills which I could not learn in Nepal,” he says. “I could prepare myself to solve the problems that I want to solve.”

At the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Sherpa continued to deepen his passion for biological science and joined a research lab. Through that work, he discovered the joys of basic research and the diverse set of skills it fosters.

“I joined the lab to learn science, but to do science, you need other skills, like research communication,” he says. “I was learning unintentionally from being in a research position.”

When Covid-19 spread around the globe, Sherpa wanted to apply the expertise and resources he had gained to help his people address the crisis. It was then that he started The Bright Vision Foundation, an organization aiming to raise the standards of health care and education in underserved communities in Nepal. Through the foundation, he raised funds to distribute PPE, provide health care services, and set up the computer lab in his childhood home.

“Today’s world is all about technology and innovation, but here are good people in my community who don’t even know about computers,” he says.

With the help of his brother, who serves as the lab instructor, and his parents, who provide the space and support the lab, and Sherpa’s own fundraising, he aims to help youths from backgrounds similar to his own be better prepared for the technologically advanced, globalized world of today.

The MIT chapter

Now, at MIT, Sherpa speaks with deep appreciation of the opportunities that the university has opened up for him — the people he has been meeting here, and the skills he has been learning.

Professor of biology Adam C. Martin, Sherpa’s principal investigator, views making sure that international trainees like Mingmar are aware of the wide range of opportunities MIT offers — whether it be workshops, collaborations, networking and funding possibilities, or help with the pathway toward graduate school — as a key part of creating a supportive environment.

Understanding the additional burdens on international trainees gives Martin extra appreciation for Sherpa’s perseverance, motivation, and desire to share his culture with the lab, sharing Nepalese food and providing context for Nepalese customs.

Being at such a research-intensive institution as MIT has helped Sherpa further clarify his goals and his view of the paths he can take to achieve them. Since college, his three passions have been intertwined: leadership, research, and human health.

Sherpa will pursue a PhD in biomedical and biological sciences with a focus in cancer biology at Cornell University in the fall. In the longer term, he plans to focus on developing policy to improve public health.

Although Sherpa recognizes that Nepal is not the only place that might need his help, he has a sharp focus and an acute sense of what he is best positioned to do now. Sherpa is gearing up to organize a health camp in the spring to bring doctors to rural areas in Nepal, not only to provide care, but also to gather data on nutrition and health in different regions of the country.

“I cannot, in a day, or even a year, bring the living conditions of people in vulnerable communities up to a higher level, but I can slowly increase the living standard of people in less-developed communities, especially in Nepal,” he says. “There might be other parts of the world which are even more vulnerable than Nepal, but I haven’t explored them yet. But I know my community in Nepal, so I want to help improve people’s lives there.”

New study reveals how cleft lip and cleft palate can arise

MIT biologists have found that defects in some transfer RNA molecules can lead to the formation of these common conditions.

Anne Trafton | MIT News
April 17, 2025

Cleft lip and cleft palate are among the most common birth defects, occurring in about one in 1,050 births in the United States. These defects, which appear when the tissues that form the lip or the roof of the mouth do not join completely, are believed to be caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors.

In a new study, MIT biologists have discovered how a genetic variant often found in people with these facial malformations leads to the development of cleft lip and cleft palate.

Their findings suggest that the variant diminishes cells’ supply of transfer RNA, a molecule that is critical for assembling proteins. When this happens, embryonic face cells are unable to fuse to form the lip and roof of the mouth.

“Until now, no one had made the connection that we made. This particular gene was known to be part of the complex involved in the splicing of transfer RNA, but it wasn’t clear that it played such a crucial role for this process and for facial development. Without the gene, known as DDX1, certain transfer RNA can no longer bring amino acids to the ribosome to make new proteins. If the cells can’t process these tRNAs properly, then the ribosomes can’t make protein anymore,” says Michaela Bartusel, an MIT research scientist and the lead author of the study.

Eliezer Calo, an associate professor of biology at MIT, is the senior author of the paper, which appears today in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Genetic variants

Cleft lip and cleft palate, also known as orofacial clefts, can be caused by genetic mutations, but in many cases, there is no known genetic cause.

“The mechanism for the development of these orofacial clefts is unclear, mostly because they are known to be impacted by both genetic and environmental factors,” Calo says. “Trying to pinpoint what might be affected has been very challenging in this context.”

To discover genetic factors that influence a particular disease, scientists often perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which can reveal variants that are found more often in people who have a particular disease than in people who don’t.

For orofacial clefts, some of the genetic variants that have regularly turned up in GWAS appeared to be in a region of DNA that doesn’t code for proteins. In this study, the MIT team set out to figure out how variants in this region might influence the development of facial malformations.

Their studies revealed that these variants are located in an enhancer region called e2p24.2. Enhancers are segments of DNA that interact with protein-coding genes, helping to activate them by binding to transcription factors that turn on gene expression.

The researchers found that this region is in close proximity to three genes, suggesting that it may control the expression of those genes. One of those genes had already been ruled out as contributing to facial malformations, and another had already been shown to have a connection. In this study, the researchers focused on the third gene, which is known as DDX1.

DDX1, it turned out, is necessary for splicing transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules, which play a critical role in protein synthesis. Each transfer RNA molecule transports a specific amino acid to the ribosome — a cell structure that strings amino acids together to form proteins, based on the instructions carried by messenger RNA.

While there are about 400 different tRNAs found in the human genome, only a fraction of those tRNAs require splicing, and those are the tRNAs most affected by the loss of DDX1. These tRNAs transport four different amino acids, and the researchers hypothesize that these four amino acids may be particularly abundant in proteins that embryonic cells that form the face need to develop properly.

When the ribosomes need one of those four amino acids, but none of them are available, the ribosome can stall, and the protein doesn’t get made.

The researchers are now exploring which proteins might be most affected by the loss of those amino acids. They also plan to investigate what happens inside cells when the ribosomes stall, in hopes of identifying a stress signal that could potentially be blocked and help cells survive.

Malfunctioning tRNA

While this is the first study to link tRNA to craniofacial malformations, previous studies have shown that mutations that impair ribosome formation can also lead to similar defects. Studies have also shown that disruptions of tRNA synthesis — caused by mutations in the enzymes that attach amino acids to tRNA, or in proteins involved in an earlier step in tRNA splicing — can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders.

“Defects in other components of the tRNA pathway have been shown to be associated with neurodevelopmental disease,” Calo says. “One interesting parallel between these two is that the cells that form the face are coming from the same place as the cells that form the neurons, so it seems that these particular cells are very susceptible to tRNA defects.”

The researchers now hope to explore whether environmental factors linked to orofacial birth defects also influence tRNA function. Some of their preliminary work has found that oxidative stress — a buildup of harmful free radicals — can lead to fragmentation of tRNA molecules. Oxidative stress can occur in embryonic cells upon exposure to ethanol, as in fetal alcohol syndrome, or if the mother develops gestational diabetes.

“I think it is worth looking for mutations that might be causing this on the genetic side of things, but then also in the future, we would expand this into which environmental factors have the same effects on tRNA function, and then see which precautions might be able to prevent any effects on tRNAs,” Bartusel says.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Professor Anthony Sinskey, biologist, inventor, entrepreneur, and Center for Biomedical Innovation co-founder, dies at 84

Colleagues remember the longtime MIT professor as a supportive, energetic collaborator who seemed to know everyone at the Institute.

Zach Winn | MIT News
February 20, 2025

Longtime MIT Professor Anthony “Tony” Sinskey ScD ’67, who was also the co-founder and faculty director of the Center for Biomedical Innovation (CBI), passed away on Feb. 12 at his home in New Hampshire. He was 84.

Deeply engaged with MIT, Sinskey left his mark on the Institute as much through the relationships he built as the research he conducted. Colleagues say that throughout his decades on the faculty, Sinskey’s door was always open.

“He was incredibly generous in so many ways,” says Graham Walker, an American Cancer Society Professor at MIT. “He was so willing to support people, and he did it out of sheer love and commitment. If you could just watch Tony in action, there was so much that was charming about the way he lived. I’ve said for years that after they made Tony, they broke the mold. He was truly one of a kind.”

Sinskey’s lab at MIT explored methods for metabolic engineering and the production of biomolecules. Over the course of his research career, he published more than 350 papers in leading peer-reviewed journals for biology, metabolic engineering, and biopolymer engineering, and filed more than 50 patents. Well-known in the biopharmaceutical industry, Sinskey contributed to the founding of multiple companies, including Metabolix, Tepha, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, and Genzyme Corporation. Sinskey’s work with CBI also led to impactful research papers, manufacturing initiatives, and educational content since its founding in 2005.

Across all of his work, Sinskey built a reputation as a supportive, collaborative, and highly entertaining friend who seemed to have a story for everything.

“Tony would always ask for my opinions — what did I think?” says Barbara Imperiali, MIT’s Class of 1922 Professor of Biology and Chemistry, who first met Sinskey as a graduate student. “Even though I was younger, he viewed me as an equal. It was exciting to be able to share my academic journey with him. Even later, he was continually opening doors for me, mentoring, connecting. He felt it was his job to get people into a room together to make new connections.”

Sinskey grew up in the small town of Collinsville, Illinois, and spent nights after school working on a farm. For his undergraduate degree, he attended the University of Illinois, where he got a job washing dishes at the dining hall. One day, as he recalled in a 2020 conversation, he complained to his advisor about the dishwashing job, so the advisor offered him a job washing equipment in his microbiology lab.

In a development that would repeat itself throughout Sinskey’s career, he befriended the researchers in the lab and started learning about their work. Soon he was showing up on weekends and helping out. The experience inspired Sinskey to go to graduate school, and he only applied to one place.

Sinskey earned his ScD from MIT in nutrition and food science in 1967. He joined MIT’s faculty a few years later and never left.

“He loved MIT and its excellence in research and education, which were incredibly important to him,” Walker says. “I don’t know of another institution this interdisciplinary — there’s barely a speed bump between departments — so you can collaborate with anybody. He loved that. He also loved the spirit of entrepreneurship, which he thrived on. If you heard somebody wanted to get a project done, you could run around, get 10 people, and put it together. He just loved doing stuff like that.”

Working across departments would become a signature of Sinskey’s research. His original office was on the first floor of MIT’s Building 56, right next to the parking lot, so he’d leave his door open in the mornings and afternoons and colleagues would stop in and chat.

“One of my favorite things to do was to drop in on Tony when I saw that his office door was open,” says Chris Kaiser, MIT’s Amgen Professor of Biology. “We had a whole range of things we liked to catch up on, but they always included his perspectives looking back on his long history at MIT. It also always included hopes for the future, including tracking trajectories of MIT students, whom he doted on.”

Long before the internet, colleagues describe Sinskey as a kind of internet unto himself, constantly leveraging his vast web of relationships to make connections and stay on top of the latest science news.

“He was an incredibly gracious person — and he knew everyone,” Imperiali says. “It was as if his Rolodex had no end. You would sit there and he would say, ‘Call this person.’ or ‘Call that person.’ And ‘Did you read this new article?’ He had a wonderful view of science and collaboration, and he always made that a cornerstone of what he did. Whenever I’d see his door open, I’d grab a cup of tea and just sit there and talk to him.”

When the first recombinant DNA molecules were produced in the 1970s, it became a hot area of research. Sinskey wanted to learn more about recombinant DNA, so he hosted a large symposium on the topic at MIT that brought in experts from around the world.

“He got his name associated with recombinant DNA for years because of that,” Walker recalls. “People started seeing him as Mr. Recombinant DNA. That kind of thing happened all the time with Tony.”

Sinskey’s research contributions extended beyond recombinant DNA into other microbial techniques to produce amino acids and biodegradable plastics. He co-founded CBI in 2005 to improve global health through the development and dispersion of biomedical innovations. The center adopted Sinskey’s collaborative approach in order to accelerate innovation in biotechnology and biomedical research, bringing together experts from across MIT’s schools.

“Tony was at the forefront of advancing cell culture engineering principles so that making biomedicines could become a reality. He knew early on that biomanufacturing was an important step on the critical path from discovering a drug to delivering it to a patient,” says Stacy Springs, the executive director of CBI. “Tony was not only my boss and mentor, but one of my closest friends. He was always working to help everyone reach their potential, whether that was a colleague, a former or current researcher, or a student. He had a gentle way of encouraging you to do your best.”

“MIT is one of the greatest places to be because you can do anything you want here as long as it’s not a crime,” Sinskey joked in 2020. “You can do science, you can teach, you can interact with people — and the faculty at MIT are spectacular to interact with.”

Sinskey shared his affection for MIT with his family. His wife, the late ChoKyun Rha ’62, SM ’64, SM ’66, ScD ’67, was a professor at MIT for more than four decades and the first woman of Asian descent to receive tenure at MIT. His two sons also attended MIT — Tong-ik Lee Sinskey ’79, SM ’80 and Taeminn Song MBA ’95, who is the director of strategy and strategic initiatives for MIT Information Systems and Technology (IS&T).

Song recalls: “He was driven by same goal my mother had: to advance knowledge in science and technology by exploring new ideas and pushing everyone around them to be better.”

Around 10 years ago, Sinskey began teaching a class with Walker, Course 7.21/7.62 (Microbial Physiology). Walker says their approach was to treat the students as equals and learn as much from them as they taught. The lessons extended beyond the inner workings of microbes to what it takes to be a good scientist and how to be creative. Sinskey and Rha even started inviting the class over to their home for Thanksgiving dinner each year.

“At some point, we realized the class was turning into a close community,” Walker says. “Tony had this endless supply of stories. It didn’t seem like there was a topic in biology that Tony didn’t have a story about either starting a company or working with somebody who started a company.”

Over the last few years, Walker wasn’t sure they were going to continue teaching the class, but Sinskey remarked it was one of the things that gave his life meaning after his wife’s passing in 2021. That decided it.

After finishing up this past semester with a class-wide lunch at Legal Sea Foods, Sinskey and Walker agreed it was one of the best semesters they’d ever taught.

In addition to his two sons, Sinskey is survived by his daughter-in-law Hyunmee Elaine Song, five grandchildren, and two great grandsons. He has two brothers, Terry Sinskey (deceased in 1975) and Timothy Sinskey, and a sister, Christine Sinskey Braudis.

Gifts in Sinskey’s memory can be made to the ChoKyun Rha (1962) and Anthony J Sinskey (1967) Fund.

MIT biologists discover a new type of control over RNA splicing

They identified proteins that influence splicing of about half of all human introns, allowing for more complex types of gene regulation.

Anne Trafton | MIT News
February 20, 2025

RNA splicing is a cellular process that is critical for gene expression. After genes are copied from DNA into messenger RNA, portions of the RNA that don’t code for proteins, called introns, are cut out and the coding portions are spliced back together.

This process is controlled by a large protein-RNA complex called the spliceosome. MIT biologists have now discovered a new layer of regulation that helps to determine which sites on the messenger RNA molecule the spliceosome will target.

The research team discovered that this type of regulation, which appears to influence the expression of about half of all human genes, is found throughout the animal kingdom, as well as in plants. The findings suggest that the control of RNA splicing, a process that is fundamental to gene expression, is more complex than previously known.

“Splicing in more complex organisms, like humans, is more complicated than it is in some model organisms like yeast, even though it’s a very conserved molecular process. There are bells and whistles on the human spliceosome that allow it to process specific introns more efficiently. One of the advantages of a system like this may be that it allows more complex types of gene regulation,” says Connor Kenny, an MIT graduate student and the lead author of the study.

Christopher Burge, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Biology at MIT, is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Nature Communications.

Building proteins

RNA splicing, a process discovered in the late 1970s, allows cells to precisely control the content of the mRNA transcripts that carry the instructions for building proteins.

Each mRNA transcript contains coding regions, known as exons, and noncoding regions, known as introns. They also include sites that act as signals for where splicing should occur, allowing the cell to assemble the correct sequence for a desired protein. This process enables a single gene to produce multiple proteins; over evolutionary timescales, splicing can also change the size and content of genes and proteins, when different exons become included or excluded.

The spliceosome, which forms on introns, is composed of proteins and noncoding RNAs called small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs). In the first step of spliceosome assembly, an snRNA molecule known as U1 snRNA binds to the 5’ splice site at the beginning of the intron. Until now, it had been thought that the binding strength between the 5’ splice site and the U1 snRNA was the most important determinant of whether an intron would be spliced out of the mRNA transcript.

In the new study, the MIT team discovered that a family of proteins called LUC7 also helps to determine whether splicing will occur, but only for a subset of introns — in human cells, up to 50 percent.

Before this study, it was known that LUC7 proteins associate with U1 snRNA, but the exact function wasn’t clear. There are three different LUC7 proteins in human cells, and Kenny’s experiments revealed that two of these proteins interact specifically with one type of 5’ splice site, which the researchers called “right-handed.” A third human LUC7 protein interacts with a different type, which the researchers call “left-handed.”

The researchers found that about half of human introns contain a right- or left-handed site, while the other half do not appear to be controlled by interaction with LUC7 proteins. This type of control appears to add another layer of regulation that helps remove specific introns more efficiently, the researchers say.

“The paper shows that these two different 5’ splice site subclasses exist and can be regulated independently of one another,” Kenny says. “Some of these core splicing processes are actually more complex than we previously appreciated, which warrants more careful examination of what we believe to be true about these highly conserved molecular processes.”

“Complex splicing machinery”

Previous work has shown that mutation or deletion of one of the LUC7 proteins that bind to right-handed splice sites is linked to blood cancers, including about 10 percent of acute myeloid leukemias (AMLs). In this study, the researchers found that AMLs that lost a copy of the LUC7L2 gene have inefficient splicing of right-handed splice sites. These cancers also developed the same type of altered metabolism seen in earlier work.

“Understanding how the loss of this LUC7 protein in some AMLs alters splicing could help in the design of therapies that exploit these splicing differences to treat AML,” Burge says. “There are also small molecule drugs for other diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy that stabilize the interaction between U1 snRNA and specific 5’ splice sites. So the knowledge that particular LUC7 proteins influence these interactions at specific splice sites could aid in improving the specificity of this class of small molecules.”

Working with a lab led by Sascha Laubinger, a professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, the researchers found that introns in plants also have right- and left-handed 5’ splice sites that are regulated by Luc7 proteins.

The researchers’ analysis suggests that this type of splicing arose in a common ancestor of plants, animals, and fungi, but it was lost from fungi soon after they diverged from plants and animals.

“A lot what we know about how splicing works and what are the core components actually comes from relatively old yeast genetics work,” Kenny says. “What we see is that humans and plants tend to have more complex splicing machinery, with additional components that can regulate different introns independently.”

The researchers now plan to further analyze the structures formed by the interactions of Luc7 proteins with mRNA and the rest of the spliceosome, which could help them figure out in more detail how different forms of Luc7 bind to different 5’ splice sites.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the German Research Foundation.