Investigating pathogens and their life cycles, for the benefit of society

Desmond Edwards was a minor child when 1st acquired about typhoid fever. Fortunately, he didn’t have the sickness. He was on the lookout at a cartoon public overall health announcement. The cartoon, produced by the Pan American Wellbeing Firm, was intended to educate people in his dwelling nation of Jamaica about the importance of immunizations for conditions like typhoid. The typhoid character in the cartoon was so uncomfortable it gave him nightmares.

Edwards did have his honest share of healthcare facility visits throughout his childhood. But, his own struggles with infection and sickness, and people typhoid cartoon nightmares, grew to become his inspiration for pursuing a job finding out human condition. At age 6, Edwards was working impromptu baking soda experiments in repurposed glitter containers in his kitchen. Now, he is a senior at MIT, majoring in biology and biological engineering, thanks to a group of committed mentors and an insatiable curiosity about how the human overall body will work — or, extra properly, how illnesses end it from functioning.

Acquiring a way into exploration

Edwards understood he required to do study but claims he assumed that that was something you did after you obtained your diploma. Consider his surprise, then, on arriving at MIT in 2018 and meeting classmates who not only experienced finished analysis, but currently had publications. Noticing that he could get a soar-start out on his occupation, he sought out analysis chances and enrolled in the biology class 7.102 (Introduction to Molecular Biology Strategies) for his initially-calendar year Unbiased Routines Interval. The course was precisely geared towards first-12 months students like him with no lab experience.

“It was a excellent very first appear at how study is accomplished,” Edwards states of the course. Pupils took drinking water samples from the Charles River and ended up envisioned to establish the strains of microorganisms identified in these samples working with a variety of biological tactics. They seemed at the micro organism under a microscope. They examined how the samples metabolized different sources of carbon and decided if they could be stained by different dyes. They even got to consider out standard genetic sequencing. “We knew exactly where we were being setting up. And we understood the end purpose,” states Edwards. The in-amongst was up to them.

Course 7.102 is taught by Mandana Sassanfar, a lecturer in biology and the department’s director of diversity and science outreach. For Sassanfar, the class is also an prospect to locate lab placements for college students. In Edwards’ circumstance, she actually led him to the lab of Assistant Professor Becky Lamason, walking up with him one particular evening to meet up with a postdoc, Jon McGinn, to speak about the lab and options there. Following Edwards expressed his interest to Lamason, she responded within just 30 minutes. McGinn even followed up to remedy any lingering concerns.

“I imagine that was seriously what pushed it around the edge,” he claims of his decision to just take a placement in the Lamason lab. “I observed that they were interested not only in possessing me as someone to help them do exploration, but also fascinated in my individual enhancement.”

At the edges of cells and disciplines

The Lamason lab researches the existence cycle of two distinctive pathogens, making an attempt to fully grasp how the bacteria go concerning cells. Edwards has focused on Rickettsia parkeri, a tick-borne pathogen which is accountable for leading to spotted fever. This type of Rickettsia is what biologists call an obligate intracellular pathogen, meaning that it resides within cells and can only survive when it’s in a host. “I like to call it a glorified virus,” Edwards jokes.

Edwards gets excited describing the a variety of approaches in which R. parkeri can outsmart its contaminated host. It’s progressed to escape the phagosome of the cell, the tiny liquid sac that sorts from the mobile membrane and engulfs organisms like microbes that pose a danger. When it will get past the phagosome and enters the mobile, it normally takes over mobile equipment, just like a virus. At this point of the existence cycle, a bacterium will usually replicate so many situations that the contaminated cell will burst, and the pathogen will unfold broadly. R. parkeri, though, can also spread to uninfected cells instantly by the membrane in which two cells touch. By not causing a cell to burst, the bacterium can distribute without alerting the host to its presence.

“From a ailment standpoint, which is incredibly attention-grabbing,” states Edwards. “If you’re not leaving the cell or currently being detected, you really don’t see antibodies. You never see immune cells. It is incredibly really hard to get that standard immune response.”

In his time in the lab, Edwards has labored on various tasks associated to Rickettsia, which includes establishing genetic applications to research the pathogen and analyzing the opportunity genes that may possibly be vital in its everyday living cycle. His jobs sit at the intersection of biology and biological engineering.

“For me, I form of stay in between those people areas,” Edwards clarifies. “I am incredibly fascinated in knowledge the mechanisms that underlie all of biology. But I really don’t only want to comprehend individuals methods. I also want to engineer them and utilize them in means that can be effective to culture.”

Science for society

Past year, Edwards received the Whitehead Prize from the Section of Biology, recognizing college students with “outstanding promise for a job in biological exploration.” But his extracurricular functions have been pushed far more by his need to apply science for tangible social gains.

“How do you take the science that you’ve finished in the lab, in unique exploration contexts, and translate that in a way that the community will basically profit from it?” he asks.

Science education and learning is especially essential for Edwards, given the educational possibilities he was provided to assistance get to MIT. As a high schooler, Edwards participated in a Caribbean Science Basis initiative called the Student Programme for Innovation in Science and Engineering. SPISE, as it’s identified, is created to motivate and assist Caribbean students interested in professions in STEM fields. The program is modeled on the Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science program (MITES) at MIT. Cardinal Warde, a professor of electrical engineering, is himself from the Caribbean and serves as the college director for both MITES and SPISE.

“That encounter not only form of opened my eyes a little bit more to what was obtainable, what was in the realm of options, but also delivered assistance to get to MIT,” Edwards claims of SPISE. For instance, the application aided with college applications and labored with him to protected an internship at a biotech enterprise when he initial moved to the United States.

“If education falters, then you really do not replenish the discipline of science,” Edwards argues. “You never get youthful generations fired up, and the public won’t care.”

Edwards has also taken a leadership role in the MIT Biotechnology Group, a campus-extensive pupil group meant to create connections amongst the MIT community and believed leaders in industry, business, and academia. For Edwards, the biotech and pharmaceutical industries enjoy a clear role in disease treatment, and he knew he required to join the group in advance of he even arrived at MIT. In 2019, he grew to become co-director of the Biotech Group’s Business Initiative, a plan centered on preparing customers for field occupations. In 2020, he grew to become undergraduate president, and this 12 months he’s co-president of the complete firm. Edwards speaks proudly of what the Biotech Group has completed through his tenure on the executive board, highlighting that they not only have the premier cohort ever this calendar year, but it’s also the to start with time the team has been vast majority undergraduate.

By some means, in concerning his investigate and outreach operate, Edwards finds time to minimal in French, participate in for the Quidditch group, and serve as co-president on the System 20 Undergraduate Board, among the other pursuits. It’s a balancing act that Edwards has mastered around his time at MIT because of his genuine enjoyment and curiosity in everything that he does.

“I don’t like not understanding matters,” he jokes. “That applies to science, but it also extends to men and women.”