 Professor Erin Cram, Biology Graduate Programs Coordinator |
Faculty Highlight: Prof. Erin Cram |
The College of Science Graduate Program staff talks with Prof. Cram about her research at Northeastern University in this faculty highlight.
Can you tell us about your current research?
We have two current projects in the lab. They’re both overlapping with engineering projects. The first is to improve production of drug compounds of a medicinal plant Madagascar periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus. It produces a lot of medicinal compounds, but the main ones we’re interested in are used to treat leukemia. It produces them at very low amounts, so the engineering goal is to increase production of this compound from plant cell cultures. The science goal, that we’re more involved with, is understanding how the cells of the plant decide to turn on these compounds. They are expensive for the plant to make, so when they are making these compounds they are not taking care of their own growth and reproduction. It’s a balance between what they’re going to use their energy for, either defense or building, kind of like how a society does. Because resources are limited, you have to decide what you’re going to do. Growth and development, or defense.
The other project has nothing to do with that. My lab is a worm lab. There are a lot of people that study these worms, C. elegans. It’s a common genetic model organism. We’re interested in how tubes of cells coordinate their behavior. We study their reproductive system, which is a tube of cells that makes baby worms. We’re interested in how that tissue forms, how it functions, and how the cells work together to produce a collective action.
What drew you to the field of biology?
Well, I kind of took a winding road. I started out as an undergraduate in art history, and I really enjoy that field. But, it didn’t seem practical, so I thought “what else do I like?” And I liked field biology, so I did most of my undergrad in organismal biology, field biology, ecology. But at the time I was doing that, I also had a work-study job in a lab that worked on cystic fibrosis, and I found that I really liked experimental molecular biology, cell biology. It felt interesting, and useful. And molecular. I think if field biology or ecology was like what it is now I probably would have stuck with that. But at the time it was much more natural history, just descriptive. Now it’s much more molecular than it was at the time. So I like the molecular aspect, and I decided to go to grad school for molecular cell biology.
Read the rest of the article and learn Prof. Cram’s recommendation to Graduate Students: https://cos.northeastern.edu//2016/10/erin-cram/
