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DEPARTMENTS:
Profile UM junior Amanda Ng explores
B. burgdorferi
News to Use Exercise expert encourages public health awareness
A Closer Look Briefs
Back Talk UM researcher earns highest U.S. honor for young scientists
PROFILE
DNA DISCOVERIES
UM Junior Amanda Ng Explores B. burgdorferi
by Patia Stephens
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| Amanda Ng |
With short brown hair falling over her eyes, Amanda Ng looks like a typical University of Montana junior, clad in jeans, fleece vest and Birkenstocks. She’s friendly and easygoing, blushes charmingly when she’s not sure of an answer, and punctuates her sentences with “like.”
But the 20-year-old demonstrates a familiarity with words and concepts unknown to many two and three times her age, such as Borrelia burgdorferi and fluoroquinolones. As a paid researcher in Associate Professor Scott Samuels’ molecular biology lab, Ng (pronounced “Nung”) conducts experiments with Samuels’ bacterium of choice, B. burgdorferi, which is the culprit in Lyme disease.
The Samuels lab, located in UM’s Science Complex, also belies the sophisticated research taking place within. Glass beakers and scientific equipment share space with quirky refrigerator art. Windows look out onto Mount Sentinel, and a reggae CD in the stereo livens up the steps of the handful of women and men who work in the lab.
“It’s really fun,” Ng says. “It’s better than my old job,” which was handing out change at a laundromat.
A 2000 graduate of Bozeman High School, Ng began working in the molecular biology lab in October 2001, parlaying her smarts and skills into a steady paycheck last spring.
She currently holds a prestigious fellowship from Project IBS-CORE, a UM research program formally known as Integrated Biological Science Courses Organized Around Research Experience. Project IBS-CORE is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Ng also is paid through a grant Samuels received from the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.
“I knew Amanda was going to be good,” Samuels says. “Of all the undergrads I’ve worked with, she is the most naturally talented researcher. She’s very bright and very careful, and she’s just delightful.”
Samuels has been exploring the inner workings of B. burgdorferi for nearly 12 years, initially at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, and at UM for the past seven years. All but one of his previous 14 undergraduate researchers have gone on to graduate school, medical school or a research career.
B. burgdorferi is somewhat unique among bacteria in that it is one of the few that has a linear, rather than circular, chromosome. This finding piqued Samuels’ interest.
“Initially, our questions had to do with, how does Borrelia deal with having linear DNA?” Samuels says. “How does it duplicate that genetic information and pass it on to its offspring?
“More recently, we’ve been looking at how Borrelia knows where it is and how it responds to that environment,” he continued. “For example, when a tick is feeding, Borrelia senses the tick’s change in body temperature and ‘knows,’ on a molecular level, that it’s time to move into the mammal. We want to understand how those certain genes are turned on and off.”
Ng has worked on two significant projects during her time in the lab. In the first, she extracted DNA from B. burgdorferi that had been treated with a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. (Cipro, used to treat anthrax, is perhaps the best-known fluoroquinolone.) Her project sought to uncover how the linear DNA would react to the antibiotics.
The learning process fascinates the young researcher.
“I used a lot of different techniques that I didn’t know before,” Ng says. “Every time I learn a new technique, I learn something about biology that’s bigger than just the technique.”
Describing herself as the analytical type, Ng enjoys the intellectual challenges posed by molecular biology.
“I
just like thinking about it,” she says. “It’s so complex.
I need something concrete to think about.”
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In August, Ng wrapped up a project that focused on finding an alternative to a recently discontinued medium that was used for growing, or plating, bacteria in petri dishes. This nutrient-rich “broth” supplies protein and other nutrients necessary for optimal bacterial growth. A liquid plating medium remains commercially available, but a solid medium is required for certain experiments. Ng’s project searched for an alternative.
“My experiment was to test the capabilities of different substitute ingredients,” she says. “I’d grow up colonies of different strains of B. burgdorferi and measure how concentrated the bugs were in the tube, and put the same amount on each medium. Then I’d just wait for them to grow and compare how fast colonies appear and how many colonies there were.”
Ng is the middle child in a family headed by parents David and Rita Ng of Bozeman — neither of whom are scientists. She came to UM initially declaring a pre-psychology major with the vague idea that she wanted to do research. In her second semester, however, she changed her major to human biology.
“I never would have picked thinking about molecular biology as interesting,” she says, “but it really is. It took me doing it to realize how interesting it is.”
Having finished her second year at UM, Ng cites an honors course called “Plague” as her favorite class so far. The class, taught by St. Patrick Hospital’s Dr. Herbert Swick, took a multidisciplinary approach to studying various diseases. Ng says the class was thought-provoking.
“We in the U.S. don’t even think about infectious disease all the time because we have antibiotics,” she says, “but with antibiotic resistance showing up, like with [tuberculosis], it’s becoming a problem for the U.S. We’re not insulated anymore.”
Ng, who counts hiking, backpacking and running among her passions, currently is taking a year off from science to pursue another goal: becoming fluent in Chinese. Having taken two years of Chinese at UM, she left Sept. 1 for Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she will spend the next year taking language classes.
“I really want to learn a second language,” she says. “I want to learn as much language as possible.”
Already a world traveler with trips to Australia, Mexico and the Philippines under her belt, Ng planned the journey with the help of Davidson Honors College Dean Jerry Fetz.
“I’m really excited,” she says on what was her last day in the Samuels lab for at least a year. “I think you’re missing out if you don’t travel and experience things.”
She plans to return to UM and to the lab, however, and likely will immerse herself in the tough classes that will carry her to her ultimate goal of earning a doctorate and securing a research job that gives her “something concrete to think about.” V
For more information on B. burgdorferi research visit Scott Samuels’ Web site.