Magnet school student attends prestigous conference

    While many rising high school seniors visit colleges in the summer, few have the honor of doing so for the purpose of presenting their scientific research. Renee Symonds, daughter of Steve and Beth Symonds of Belgrade, a student at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics accompanied twelve scientists from The Jackson Laboratories (JAX) to a meeting of the National Centers for Systems Biology.
    As a participant at the July 10 and 11 meeting in Princeton, New Jersey, Symonds and the teacher who accompanied her had the opportunity to present posters and attend talks by the leading genetics researchers of our time from JAX and other National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) designated Systems Biology Centers.
    At the two-day meeting each of the nine centers had one hour to describe the impact of the center designation and the research made possible by the grant.
   The keynote talk was given by Arnold J. Levine, professor at The Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study. Levine is known for his work in defining the molecular basis of tumor suppression, the much talked about p53 gene.
    While most students read about his discoveries in text books, Symonds was able to hear first hand about his latest work, which included not only more details about how stress affects this gene, but may also reveal how generations of selection pressures have resulted in numerous and varied p53 mutations.
    Other principle Investigators from centers at MIT, Princeton, UC Irvine, Mount Sinai Medical School, Duke, and the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, Washington and their research teams described their efforts at unlocking the mysteries of systems biology which one researcher compared to physiology at the molecular level.
    The story of how Symonds found herself not only attending the meeting, but presenting her own work began two years ago when Dr. Gary Churchill of JAX proposed to offer a computational biology course to students at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
    Churchill said that he was motivated externally by grant reviewers, but that has not stopped him from delivering a top-notch program to the fortunate students and faculty at the MSSM. His group has developed a year-long course during which students engage in weekly lectures, write research proposals, conduct research, and present their work orally and in printed form. Most of the course delivery has been via the Internet, enabling a second group of students from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics to participate in the 2007-2008 school year.
    Despite the fact that his most celebrated work has been cited in over 3,000 scientific papers, Churchill has made himself accessible and available at a level one wouldn’t think possible for a scientist with his accomplishments in the field of genetics research. Whether it is his native Maine roots, his passion for science, or his ability to simplify even the most challenging topics, he, along with team member Dr. Randy Von Smith, and numerous post-doctoral fellows at the lab have been motivating and inspiring for these high school students.
    Students in this class have been fortunate to attend seminars at the Jackson Laboratory, and participated in summer programs. Symonds is the first to take her work to the scientific community in the form of a poster presentation. With the intent of emphasizing her stature in the scientific community, she titled her poster “A High School Search for Genes: Identifying Genes Significant to the Atherosclerosis Phenotype.”
    The title belies the extent to which her research was truly leading-edge both in terms of content and methodology. While modern statistical techniques have been able to identify regions of the genome associated with many complex diseases, often the underlying genes have proved exclusive.
    In their research, Symonds and fellow MSSM students Ryan Keating and Chunan Liang each chose regions of the mouse genome known to be of interest to the atherosclerosis phenotype, a condition associated with heart disease. They utilized seven known techniques of computational gene analysis along with an innovative grading scheme to rank each technique by overall relevance.
    Combining diverse sources of evidence allowed the students to narrow down potential gene lists of over 200 to less than 50, offering noteworthy contributions which may one day lead to discovery of treatments for the disease.
    Attending the centers meeting was a capstone experience.
    “Being able to experience the scientific community had the most impact for me. We learned about scientific communication in the course, but being able to see, first hand, how everything comes together was the best part,” Symonds said.
    Symonds is not certain which college she will attend next year, but she knows science will be one of her primary areas of study.
    This fall JAX and MSSM will once again offer computational biology as a biology elective. Deborah McGann, the teacher/facilitator at the MSSM, who just completed a semester sabbatical at JAX, is as excited as the students to embark along with her class on another year of research.