Chromosomes in Action

Openly gay professor calls for increased diversity in research, including in his own cutting-edge field of cell biology and genetics

Assistant professor Ofer Rog arrived at research in cellular biology through a liberal arts education that is not as common in his homeland of Israel as it is in the United States. Classical education and the critical thinking it engenders allowed Rog, currently in his second year at the U of U’s School of Biological Sciences, to take an organic approach to his academic journey, including a pit stop at a tech company before completing his PhD at University College London.

“The U.S. has become a powerhouse in science partly because it has invested for decades in basic science research,” he says. “It is reaching to answer basic questions like ‘How do chromosomes work?’ that ends up cracking open medical applications.”

Today, Rog’s work on the regulation of chromosomes–of paramount importance for almost all aspects of biology–have led to a prestigious MIRA grant from the NIH and a robust lab. Rog studies the principles and the molecular mechanisms that organize chromosomes, primarily using a tiny roundworm that can barely be seen by the naked eye: C. elegans. “The worm is free-living [not parasitic,]” explains Rog, “and very easy to genetically manipulate with its simple systems of only one thousand cells per animal. It also helps that it’s transparent.” Using green fluorescent protein (GFP) genetically engineered into its cells, Rog is able to distinguish between structures in the chromosome and to see how things work while they are working. Live cell imaging is critical in order to develop our understanding, but so is the practice of “perturbing” the biological system to figure out how things work in different scenarios. All of this is done without damaging or sacrificing the organism.

To further explain the experimental strategy, Rog invokes a much-used metaphor of an alien (the investigator) who has arrived on earth (the lab) and begins examining an automobile (the specimen). The alien may see, right out of the gate, how a car operates without understanding the mechanisms underlying it. Removing one part at a time to see how it affects the car is useful, but that sometimes can’t give a fully operational picture. Sometimes developing new ways to image, for example, the engine, while it operates provides a more comprehensive, “living” picture of the automobile and leads to further research questions. The same is true when biologists study living organisms.