What does Dr. Ardem Patapoutian, one of this year鈥檚 co-winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, have in common with James Rothman, Randy Schekman, and 7 other Nobel laureates? They all attended one of 黑料吃瓜资源鈥檚 (CSHL) courses! According to Dr. David Stewart, Executive Director of the , 鈥淒r. Patapoutian鈥檚 recent win brings us up to 10 laureates who have participated as a trainee in one of our courses.鈥� Of this list, Dr. Patapoutian is the second Nobel laureate to have taken a CSHL course at the Banbury estate. Every summer, the Banbury Center pauses meetings so that the Meetings & Courses Program can convene students and instructors on the estate. Unlike courses held at CSHL鈥檚 main campus in Cold Spring Harbor, which are usually larger and may involve 鈥渨et鈥� lab work, courses held at the Banbury campus instead prioritize smaller, lecture- and discussion-based gatherings.
Dr. Patapoutian visited Banbury in 1995, participating in the developmental neurobiology course taught by Dr. Greg Lemke, Professor in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory and the Fran莽oise Gilot-Salk Chair at the Salk Institute. According to Dr. Lemke, 鈥淚t was a time when developmental neurobiology was a very active field of science鈥here was a lot of new science that was introduced during that course that wasn鈥檛 even published yet.鈥�
As a neurobiologist and an immunologist, Dr. Lemke and his lab鈥檚 current work involves receptor tyrosine kinase signaling in the nervous and immune systems. 鈥淥ver the last 10 years or so,鈥� Dr. Lemke explained, 鈥渨e focused on this family of receptor tyrosine kinases called TAM receptors, which were originally discovered in my lab back in the 1990s.鈥� TAM receptors can be found in many different cell types, but Dr. Lemke is particularly interested in their dual roles in macrophage recognition of apoptotic cells and as feedback inhibitors of immune responses.
Dr. Lemke鈥檚 first experience with the Banbury Center, though, came much earlier, when he was a graduate student in 1980. Attending as a 鈥減inch-hitter鈥� substitute for his advisor, the 鈥淯sage of Monoclonal Antibodies in Neurobiology鈥� meeting was also one of the first scientific conferences that Dr. Lemke ever attended. He participated in the meeting alongside Nobel laureates such as Marshall Nirenberg, as well as the future President of MIT, Susan Hockfield.
Since then, Dr. Lemke has attended or organized other Banbury meetings and, starting in the mid-90s, he began to teach his own 2-week-long developmental neurobiology course at Banbury alongside Dennis O鈥橪eary. 鈥淚 actually really, really enjoyed it,鈥� Dr. Lemke recalled. 鈥淲e used to invite a different speaker a day and that speaker would have basically the whole day to talk about their stuff. We invited the top folks in developmental neurobiology at the time and I think it was a great experience for the students.鈥� The goal of the course was to get students to think about cutting-edge science and possible applications between different branches of science.
Dr. Lemke remembered one student, a post-doctoral fellow who was interested in how olfactory receptor neurons鈥� axons grew into the olfactory bulb, what routes they take, and how they were organized: 鈥淲e had one speaker who was just developing reagents that would allow you to visualize the growth of any axon鈥he student said, 鈥業 wonder if I can try to do that in a mouse with an olfactory receptor gene鈥欌�he speaker is talking about this and he hasn鈥檛 published his paper yet; it came out three months later. The student had access to the idea, he got the reagent from the speaker, he did the experiment, and he made a spectacular observation.鈥� In that experiment, the student stained the promoter of a specific olfactory receptor gene expressed in a small number of neurons scattered throughout the nose. He found that all of those axons converge on and innervate a single glomerulus. Today, this observation is considered fundamental to olfactory neurobiology but it would not have been possible if that student hadn鈥檛 attended the developmental neurobiology course and met with this speaker.
鈥淏anbury is a special place鈥ut in terms of the nature of the courses and the nature of the meetings, they are quite unusual. They are very small鈥hey are very valuable from that standpoint鈥ou brought these people from all over the world鈥here is a lot of opportunity to explore and they tend to be at the cutting edge. There鈥檚 not a lot of other places like that,鈥� said Dr. Lemke.
Dr. Stewart added, 鈥淲e are proud to play a role in teaching and shaping experts in a wide variety of disciplines, past, present, and future.鈥�