Scientist Profile: Abby Buchwalter, February 11th

Name: Abby Buchwalter

Hometown: Hopewell, New York

Hobbies: running, cooking, knitting

What do you study? I look inside cells to see how they are put together. You have probably learned what the different pieces of a cell are, but you may not know something really cool- that many of these pieces move around inside the cell. I watch this using a microscope. I study the nucleus, which is inside every cell and holds the cell’s DNA- its instruction manual. To get in and out of the nucleus, things have to go through gates. I study how these gates work.

Why is it important? The nucleus holds the DNA, which is the same in every cell in our bodies, but as you can imagine, a skin cell looks and acts very differently from a brain cell. How does that work? The DNA is like an instruction manual, but some cells read it in different ways than others. The gates to the nucleus control what gets to the DNA to read it and use its information.

What do you like about being a scientist? I get to spend my time solving puzzles. Because there are so many questions to ask about the world, my job is simply to decide what question I really want to know the answer to, then go figure it out. Of course, it has to be an important question, one whose answer will help us to understand biology better and eventually help us improve human life. I have to convince other scientists that it’s important, and work with other scientists to figure it out.

Here is a video tour of our tissue culture room, where we grow cells. I will tell you more about working with cells when we chat next week!