Love was in the air at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting in Seattle, Washington. This had nothing to do with the meeting and everything to do with the date: Valentine’s Day weekend (February 12-16, 2004). I traveled to Seattle with fellow UBRP student and lab-mate Sebastian Treusch to present our posters at the student poster session on Saturday. Sunshine met us as we flew into Seattle, a most surprising start to our trip! Since this was my first trip to Seattle, I was excited that we managed to avoid rain. We stayed downtown, just a few blocks from Pike’s Market and Puget Sound. The meeting began Thursday evening with an opening address by Mary Ellen Avery, the president of AAAS, and was followed by the guest speaker of the evening, Richard D. Klausner, the executive director of global health for the Gates Foundation. Klausner discussed the plans for the Gates Foundation to provide immunizations to children in developing countries, focusing largely on Africa. This opening plenary lecture gave us a taste of the breadth of scientific fields that would be presented at this meeting. We ended our first night at the Cheesecake Factory, what a treat!

The lectures I attended included the search for novel drugs in nature, consensus in science, the ethics of research in developing countries, intelligent design, the science of love and marriage (on Valentine’s Day, of course), tissue engineering, gene therapy, and cloning. Sebastian volunteered his time as a session aide and so was able to attend lectures such as miniaturization of fuel cells and gas rotary engines, and healthcare policies. Sebastian and I also attended several receptions, hosted by the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion committee, the AAAS Science and Human Rights committee, the German research foundations, and the Association for Women in Science. Not only were we able to network with various faculty, industry members, nonprofit organizations, students, and AAAS members, but we were also enticed by the free food (as UBRPers know, this is VERY important).

On Saturday we were ready to present our research. Little did we know that we were placed in the Seattle Convention Center along with all the other Exhibit Hall vendors and groups. It also happened to include Family Science Day for Seattle, also hosted by AAAS and open to the public. It wasn’t easy for me to explain “Genome-Based RNA Interference Screen Identifies Regulators of Endocytosis in Caenorhabditis elegans” to parents and children there for a science fair. My poster explained using RNA interference to screen chromosome I of C. elegans for genes causing mutant phenotypes in their coelomocytes. I identified thirteen genes giving mutant phenotypes and characterized several of them further. We have begun to screen the rest of the chromosomes using RNA interference and hope to identify all the genes involved in endocytosis in C. elegans.

Sebastian’s poster, entitled “CUP-5/h-mucolipin-1 is required for lysosome biogenesis,” explored the role of CUP-5 in the formation and scission of nascent lysosomes. It also explained at which stage of endocytosis a defect occurs in cup-5 mutant worms. The findings discussed in his poster have recently been published in PNAS.

Not only did we each have trouble explaining our posters to the general public, we had to compete with the Cloned Mules of Utah for attention, which is never easy. All in all however, the poster session was a success because we were able to improve our ability to communicate our research to those with a very minimal scientific background.

Our final night included a lecture by Kip S. Thorne from Caltech who discussed “Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves”: a strikingly different topic than childhood immunizations discussed the first night. We then proceeded to fill our faces with good old Seattle seafood. What a way to end a fabulous experience. The AAAS Annual Meeting was not entirely what we expected and yet filled our expectations. It allowed us to explore a broad range of topics in science; none intensely, but all well discussed and helped to see the true variety that is available to us as scientists. And you can never forget the sun and seafood that greeted us in our Seattle adventure. We would like to thank our faculty sponsor, Dr. Johnny Fares, Carol Bender, UBRP and HHMI (grant #52003749) for support intellectually, emotionally and financially in making this trip possible.

Sarah Knuth and Sebastian Treusch, UBRPers in Dr. Johnny Fares’ lab, Molecular and Cellular Biology