Musings on life and developmental neurobiology

A personal and topical scientific history

How to Live Your Life!And do Science!

• How do you decide: What to do; When to do it; Where to do it; Who to do it with; How long to do it; and when to do something else?

Experience as many things as you can, provided that they are reasonably legal and not terribly harmful.

• Keep track of the things you like to do.• (and do not like to do.)• Do as many of them well as you can.• Keep your options open as much as possible.• Select the one(s) that make(s) you happiest,

most satisfied and self-actualized at a given time. Things that you would pay to do for fun if you were not getting paid to do it.

• Try to get someone to pay you to do it!

• People are important!• Develop your own networks!

Dr. Murphy Born here

• Finances precluded farming.• Everybody said: “Be a Medical Doctor”• My best high school teacher was John Ingalls

—4 years of math.• Ergo: I am going to be a math teacher--so it is

off to Southeast Missouri State University!

Doc Kelly on Winers Department Store

• War is Hell.• Vietnam was one of the worst.• It was useless, like the Iraq war.• 16 times as many Americans were killed as opposed to Iraq.• Everybody (i.e. males) was Eligible for the draft!• This was the 60’s—Black Power, Women’s Lib, Hippies,

Psychedelics and the Maturity of Rock & Role—The Beatles, the Stones, Aretha, Hendricks, Janis, Woodstock….a time of burning.

• deferments

Steve Vaughn

“Well, I want to ride up to St. Louis University and take the GRE exam nextweekend. Why don’t you ride up with me?”—Vaughn

“Well sh__, if I’m going to ride up with you,I might as well take it too.”--Murphy

The next major influence on my career

• NORMAN L. BRAASCH SCHOLARSHIP • The Norman L. Braasch Scholarship is awarded to a junior or

senior majoring in biology with 60 credit hours. An eligible candidate must:(1) have a concentration in zoology courses(2) have an overall 3.25 GPA and a 3.5 GPA in all completed zoology coursesThe scholarship is renewable provided the previous year’s recipient still meets criteria. Must reapply. Contact the Department of Biology for more information.

• “They will Pay you to go to graduate school.” (Norman Braasch).

Don Farish

• Donald J. Farish, is a biologist and President of Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. He was President of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey from 1998 to 2011.

“There are not many whalesIn Missouri, but if you want tostudy ants, you can come to my lab”--Farish

• I did a detour-taught junior high math and science for over a year.—Most difficult job I have had.

• And then: Drafted; Became America’s greatest weapon—The United States Infantryman; Became instantly “Old”.—Most anxiety prone job I have had.

My academic grandpa-Don Farish’sPhD mentorMr. AntMr. SociobiologyMr. Biodiversity

• In 1971 Wilson wrote his best book: The Insect Societies

• In this book he put forth a hypothesis that an ant colony ought to be able to adjust the numbers of its different morphological castes in response to environmental stresses.

• What does this mean?

Pheidole dentata Queen, Worker, Soldier

r

Fire Ant worker development

• Two hormones are very important:• Juvenile Hormone• Ecdysone

• In 1972 a synthetic juvenile hormone becam available: Altosid

• I bottled up a bunch of intercastes and mailed them to E.O. Wilson.

• He wrote back and said this is not enough to publish but it would make a great PhD proposal.

• But the timing was off just a little bit…• 25 years after I sent him my intercaste I met him….

• 6 months before I sent Wilson the intercastes, I had gone into Farish’s office and said “what I would really like to know is ‘how do brains control behavior’? Isn’t anyone working on this question”?

• Well,…Yes

• Dennis Willows

Tritonia diomedia& part of a sea pen

Stan and Joanie Kater

Helisoma trivolvis

Semi-intact Preparation

Odontophore & buccal mass

Radula-Odontophore

Buccal Ganglia

Helisoma buccal map

Odontophore & buccal mass

Snail Salivary Neuron

Snail Salivary neuron B4

Snail Esophageal Neuron

A) Normal B5 axonal projections

C) Normal B4 axonal projections

Neuron B4

Salivary glandcell

Normal After ET crush After regeneration

The first ever published stain with the intracellular dye, Lucifer Yellow

Axonal Regeneration

Neuron B5 is not prohibited from crossing the buccal commissure,But within the ET B5 axons make The proper choices. However Neuron B4 sends axons Indiscriminantly down all ET branches.

What does this tell us?

• There are guidance signals in the ET branches, • two uniquely identified neurons respond

differently to these signals.• Either The signals, or the responses to the

signals, in a regenerating adult are partially similar and partially different from those in the embryo.

Ching Kung

Paramecium tetraurelia

• In the fall of 1979 the Society for Neuroscience Meeting was in Atlanta. It is still the most exciting and best meeting I have gone to and the only one that really changed my scientific world view. A cadre of graduate students (primarily Corey Goodman and Michael Bate in Nick Spitzer’s lab; Haig Keshishian in David Bentley’s lab) that would play prominent roles to this day, burst into view and you could see what would happen for the next 5 or ten years… It was the meeting of grasshopper embryos. They would eventually switch to Drosophila and ride the genetic molecular wave.

From Bate, Goodman, Spitzer, 1981

Midline precurser cells lay down the main fiber tracks in the brain

The Median neuroblast gives rise to the DUM (Dorsal unpaired median cellscells) which are octopaminergic and involved in the escape response

• While Corey Goodman and Michael Bate were looking at neurodevelopment in the CNS, Haig Keshishian was looking at pioneer axons and the development of the peripheral nervous system.

First pioneer neurons in the devoloping limb bud for the metathoracic leg of grasshopper embryo

Keshishian, 1980