SCDS alum Cameron Myhrvold ’03 and Princeton University senior has a new opportunity to deepen his passion for science after receiving $250,000 in a no-strings-attached research funding. Myhrvold, a molecular biology major, is one of only 15 students nationwide to receive a prestigious fellowship from the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation that provides funding for five years of doctoral study, during which he can tackle whatever scientific challenges he chooses. He was chosen from nearly 600 applicants for the Hertz Fellowship. Students in the applied sciences and engineering are selected as fellows based on their intellect, ingenuity and potential to bring change to society, according to the Hertz Foundation. Myhrvold, who said he has a “lot of interests,” plans to pursue graduate work either in the Systems Biology Ph.D. Program at Harvard University or the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Seattle native is not yet certain in which direction he will take his doctoral study, given his fascination for questions having to do with the origins of life, evolution and synthetic biology. “I could try to answer the big questions about life, or smaller ones that have applications for particular problems,” he said. Myhrvold, who also is earning a certificate in quantitative and computational biology, has delved into different avenues of scientific inquiry during his undergraduate career. For his senior thesis, he is continuing the work he started as a junior in the lab of Bonnie Bassler, Princeton’s Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology, in studying quorum sensing, the chemical communication between bacteria. “I’ve really enjoyed studying the evolution of quorum sensing, and I think it is a great model for studying the
evolution of collective behavior in higher organisms,” Myhrvold said. “There’s a lot we can learn from bacteria.” Myhrvold’s interest in synthetic biology stems from his curiosity in “figuring out the ways we can understand how life works” using biological tools made in the lab, or “how we can use those tools to, for example, try and cure a disease.” Myhrvold also has pursued research with Simon Levin, Princeton’s George M. Moffett Professor of Biology in developing computer models to explore the evolution of resistance of some insect populations to Cry proteins, which are found in some bacteria species and are toxic to insects. Cry proteins are expressed in genetically modified crops in an effort to control insect pests — when the pests eat these proteins, they die. A particular focus of this research is to model cross-resistance to different Cry proteins, as insect pests can simultaneously develop immunity to more than one such protein. “There is a growing body of evidence that resistance to one Cry protein can have an impact on other Cry proteins, which is bad news for farmers trying to control insect pests with these proteins instead of conventional pesticides,” said Myhrvold. “The Environmental Protection Agency and biotech companies need to take this into account when designing and regulating new genetically modified crops.” By Karin Dienst and Chris Emery, Princeton University: reprinted with permission
KINETICS | SPRING 2011
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