Vital Signs:
Investigator Insight
In this section, we highlight the human side of biomedical investigation, putting a few questions to a researcher at DMS-DHMC.
Charles Brenner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Genetics and of Biochemistry
Brenner joined the DMS faculty in 2003 and is also
a member of Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer
Center. His research focuses on understanding the
cellular pathways controlled by two related genes
found in organisms from yeast to humans; in one
case, his lab is developing strategies that will kill precancerous
cells that have lost one of these genes.
How did you decide to become a scientist?
In college I told an artist friend that I wanted to
design exhibits at science museums. He told me
that if I did that, science would pass me by. He
argued that I would want always to be on the
cutting edge. He was right.
If you weren't a scientist, what would you like to be?
I think I could make a living as a designer, an interior
decorator, or a gardener.
What's your favorite nonwork activity?
Camping with my wife, Loraine, and son, Freeman,
and we haven't done it enough.
If you could travel someplace you've never been before,
where would it be and why?
For years, I have promised my wife that I'd take
time off so she could show me her old haunts in
Europe. She was born in California and raised in
New Mexico but spent five years in Europe.
What music or radio programs do you listen to most?
I listen to New Hampshire Public Radio and get
a lot of good music secondhand these days from
people I am close to.
What about you would surprise people who know you?
That I was quite involved in contact improvisational
dancing in the mid-1980s when I was living
in the San Francisco Bay area.
Finish this sentence: If I had more time I would . . .
Do an experiment myself, start to finish; cook a
magnificent meal; spend the
whole day with my son.
What advice would you offer to someone who is
contemplating going into your field?
Reverse genetics is harder and much more interdisciplinary
than you think.
Who was your scientific mentor?
Kuni Matsumoto and the late Ira Herskowitz
taught me to think like a geneticist. My graduate
advisor at Stanford, Bob Fuller, and his graduate
advisor, Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg,
as well as Bill Jencks at Brandeis, taught me to
think like an enzymologist. And my postdoc advisors
at Brandeis, Greg Petsko and Dagmar
Ringe, taught me how to do crystallography and
run a laboratory.
Do you always have a working hypothesis in the lab?
Even on the most discovery-driven projects like
a crystal structure, a mutant hunt, or a micro array,
it helps me greatly to be driven by a hypothesis.
It is important
to note
that the hypothesis
does not have to be
correct to be helpful,
but it has to be
detailed enough to
be falsifiable.
Do you find that people
have misconceptions
about your field?
I dodge around a lot, sometimes telling people
that I am a geneticist and sometimes saying that
I am a biochemist or a crystallographer or a cancer
biologist or a cell biologist. This way I can
work with whatever people know about science
and tell them a little more.
Of what professional accomplishment are you most proud?
Too soon to say, but I think we may get there
later this year.
What bores you?
I am not easily bored . . . probably doing dishes.
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