Located at Robert J. Bernard Field Station in Claremont, California, the continuously tracks the daily exchange of carbon dioxide, water vapor and energy between the Field Station’s native coastal sage scrub ecosystem and the surrounding Los Angeles atmosphere. The tower offers rare, year-round insights into how a drought-adapted, urban ecosystem “breathes” across seasons, including heat waves and dry spells.

The tower is part of AmeriFlux, a network of sites that measure ecosystem CO₂, water, energy fluxes and other climate-related data in North, Central and South America. The network connects research on field sites, all of which represent major climate and ecological biomes. Prior to the US-BFS’s establishment, there were no active monitoring sites of this kind in all of Los Angeles County. This gap meant scientists lacked continuous, reliable data on whether native coastal sage scrub in an urban setting function as a carbon sink or if it can transform to becoming a carbon source under extreme heat and drought. Researchers say determining the answer is critical for improving climate models and understanding how much carbon the Earth’s surface can realistically remove from the atmosphere. 

The tower measures three main categories of data: ecosystem fluxes, which capture how much carbon dioxide, water vapor and heat move between plants, soil and air; basic meteorology, including wind, temperature, humidity, sunlight and soil moisture; and local air-quality indicators such as particulate matter and gases like ozone. Together, these measurements allow students and collaborators to link ecosystem behavior directly to changing environmental conditions.

US-BFS is distinctive as it is the only of its kind in Los Angeles County as well as for the leading role students played in building and maintaining it.

“This is all a story of student accomplishments,” said Professor of Climate and Chemistry Sarah Kavassalis. “They turned instruments into a community resource.”

During the 2023–2024 academic year, Helen Chen ’24 designed the entire site as part of her undergraduate chemistry thesis, where she determined where the tower should be placed and how the instruments should be arranged. Before heading into the field, Chen and Sorin Jayaweera ’27 tested and validated the full system in the lab to ensure it could collect reliable data.

In summer 2024, Chen led a team of students (Mia Mirabelli ’26, Anna Figge ’27 and Matthew Simpson ’27), which installed the tower at the Field Station and connected the tower online. 

After Chen graduated, Simpson took over as the project’s lead and wrote the site’s data-processing code from scratch, producing the first publishable US-BFS dataset. This dataset was a milestone that made the measurements accessible to the wider scientific community.

“Most of my research involves processing the data from the flux tower,” said Simpson. “Understanding whether our local ecosystem is a carbon source or sink could better inform scientific modelers and policymakers when they calculate our carbon budget. Having accurate, ground-based measurements is important to verify climate models and satellite data products.”

In summer 2025, Simpson led another student team, including Figge, Stephanie Fulcar ’25, Kennetta Roebuck ’26 and Tzaara Jauhar ’27, to relocate the tower within the Field Station to an even more optimal location. The team adapted their processing tools to make them more user-friendly for outside researchers.

“I have learned so much about atmospheric chemistry, especially the eddy covariance method, which is the technique we use to measure fluxes and surface-level atmospheric dynamics,” said Simpson. “There has also been a lot that’s gone wrong along the way. The tower’s generator was stolen one winter, and we had to move the tower during the summer of 2025 to get better measurements. This taught me that scientific research is a very nonlinear process. It is reassuring to see that research can still produce interesting and impactful results despite the difficulties that researchers often face.”

The result is a site that functions as both a research platform and a community resource for researchers. Because the data is archived and shared through the AmeriFlux network, the US-BFS’s data is now part of a global system of ecosystem monitoring stations that supports climate and environmental science worldwide.

US-BFS was designed to serve as a long-term monitoring site. The team is building a multiyear record capable of capturing climate variability and extreme conditions, while actively maintaining and continuously updating the public dataset. New multiyear research funding from a grant by the Seaver Foundation will also support the expansion of complementary measurements at the site.

Interest in the data is already growing. Researchers at The Claremont Colleges are developing projects that build on the tower’s footprint, including studies of plant water stress and soil greenhouse-gas fluxes. US-BFS was also selected as a participating site in a soil hydrology project led by Indiana University, Bloomington, and faculty from other higher education institutions have reached out about potential collaborations.

The project’s hands-on research of interdisciplinary learning and societal impact of science and engineering was a key focus. Students involved in US-BFS bring together chemistry, atmospheric science, ecology, engineering and data science, designing field instrumentation, writing and validating code and interpreting how carbon, water, and energy move through a vulnerable native ecosystem. AmeriFlux’s sharing and archiving system also allows students to learn best practices in open data science while contributing a community resource used well beyond campus. 

The experience is already shaping students’ academic paths. Two project alumni took paths in graduate studies involving atmospheric chemistry, carrying their field and data-science training into the next stage of their research careers. For Simpson, the project is preparing him for his pursuit of a career as a university professor, which he anticipates will include substantial scientific research.

“It’s been exciting to be positioned in an understudied environment so I can investigate the instrumental and data processing mechanisms that are often less emphasized in other research groups,” said Simpson. “I was part of the team that first set up the tower in the summer of 2024, so it has been satisfying to see how far we have come with the project since then.”

The establishment of the US-BFS tower also opens doors to future grants and partnerships through the AmeriFlux network. The network provides shared tools and scientific visibility that connect researchers working across climate, ecology, biology and Earth systems science.

The tower functions as a major contribution to scientific research. The US-BFS transformed a patch of native landscape into a living, “breathing” laboratory, resulting in a worldwide effort to understand a changing planet.

The Beckman Scholars Program is designed to stimulate and support research activities by talented, full-time undergraduates. At 91̽�� Mudd, the program will provide a distinct 15-month mentored research experience in chemistry, biochemistry, the biological and medical sciences, or interdisciplinary combinations of these fields.

A New Standard for Interdisciplinary Excellence

The 2026 BSP is designed to leverage the College’s highly interdisciplinary STEM enterprise by serving as a distinct and prestigious research fellowship that is open to students in biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and physics, as well as those pursuing computer science as a joint major with another discipline. This integration reflects the College’s institutional commitment to building the interdisciplinary pedagogy central to its mission.

“Engaging students in cutting-edge, graduate-level research is a hallmark of our mission to help young scientific investigators learn, grow and thrive,” said Karl Haushalter, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. “The tenets of Arnold Beckman’s life—innovation and integrity—are at the bedrock of 91̽�� Mudd’s mission. Implementing the Beckman Scholars Program is instrumental in shaping the future of our research endeavors, setting a new standard for excellence in leadership and discovery.”

The Scholar Experience: Beyond the Lab

Each Beckman Scholar will receive a $26,000 award package ($21,000 stipend for the student and $5,000 for mentor and institutional support). The 15-month commitment includes two full-time summer research terms and academic year research credits.

Beyond laboratory work, Scholars will participate in a comprehensive professional development suite:

• Leadership & Networking: Scholars will plan and host the Beckman Scholars Program Seminar Series, inviting and networking with renowned external scientists.
• Scientific Communication: Students will undergo training in scientific writing, oral presentation and guided peer review. During the College’s fall research conference, Beckman Scholars will showcase the research they conducted during the summer and share their experiences participating in the BSP.
• Advanced Mentorship: Scholars will be trained on high-caliber instrumentation and receive personalized coaching for employment and graduate school preparation and for prestigious fellowships such as the NSF-GRFP, Hertz and Goldwater scholarships.

Cultivating Future STEM Leaders

The Beckman Foundation’s focus on fostering the invention of new methods and materials aligns seamlessly with 91̽�� Mudd’s vibrant research enterprise. The College has a proven track record with the program; former HMC Beckman Scholars have gone on to forge successful careers in medicine, academia and the private sector, with two having served on the College’s board of trustees.

Participating Faculty Mentors

The 2026 cohort will be supported by faculty mentors across diverse disciplines:

• Chemistry: Spencer Brucks, Colm Healy, Maduka Ogba, David Vosburg, Bilin Zhuang
• Biology: Danae Schulz
• Physics: Mark Ilton
• Engineering: Albert Dato
• Mathematics: Lisette de Pillis
• Computer Science: Calden Wloka

Application Information

The application for the Beckman Scholars Program opened to rising 91̽�� Mudd sophomores, juniors and seniors on Jan. 16, 2026, and closes on Feb. 6, 2026. The selection process is designed to identify and support outstanding students from a wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences who demonstrate a strong commitment to advancing their academic and professional goals in STEM.

About 91̽��: 91̽�� is the premier liberal arts college of engineering, science and mathematics. The College’s mission is to educate engineers, scientists and mathematicians of the highest ability who also have a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.

About the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation: Located in Irvine, California, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation supports leading-edge research in chemistry and the life sciences, and fosters the invention of methods, instruments and materials that open up new avenues of research and application.

The study complements her recent papers on how extreme heatwaves impact tree health under modest water limitation, (PNAS) in 2024 and a meta-analysis on vegetation responses to precipitation pulses, in 2025.

Guo, a plant ecophysiologist and data scientist, investigates how plants interact with their environment under extreme stress, focusing on dryland systems vulnerable to lethal combinations of heat and drought. Her work is motivated by the visible impacts of climate change, even on drought-tolerant desert species.

The paper explores how plant communities, subjected to experimental conditions mimicking precipitation regimes of different frequency, respond in years with high vs. low atmospheric drought. Because warmer air can hold more water vapor, atmospheric drought intensifies exponentially as temperatures rise. This causes plant stomata to close to prevent excess water loss, which also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide they can fix through photosynthesis. Using a multi-year rainfall manipulation experiment, the researchers found that even under the same irrigation treatments, years with drier atmospheric conditions yielded 39% less productivity.

These findings highlight the risks posed by climate-driven changes to atmospheric dryness and rainfall patterns, underscoring the importance of understanding plant strategies for survival in water-limited environments. Guo serves as co-principal investigator of a National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network, , that works to establish a comprehensive database of plant water potential. The initiative seeks to harmonize data on plant water stress measured, making them available to disciplines such as remote sensing and ecosystem modeling and enabling researchers to better predict and manage ecological responses to climate extremes.

In addition to cultivating student competency in biology and climate, the new major will develop computational and systems thinking literacy and student knowledge about the impact of their work on society. The Hixon Center envisions biology–climate graduates pursuing career pathways in urban greening, regenerative agriculture, ecosystem greening and carbon offsets. Students would also be well prepared for graduate studies in ecoinformatics, ecology, general biology and environmental studies.

“The new major will provide a pathway for students interested in biology who want to couple their preparation as biologists with climate coursework because they’re excited about working on nature-based climate solutions,” says Lelia Hawkins, director of the Hixon Center and Hixon Professor of Climate Studies. “It’s also an incredible opportunity to grow the biology major at 91̽�� Mudd—by providing new ways to explore dimensions of an important and powerful field.”

Students will complete foundational coursework in climate, including thermodynamics, probability/statistics and scientific computing, and climate-specific coursework in climate dynamics, climate impacts, climate solutions and climate contexts. Foundational biology coursework will couple with a writing-intensive biology seminar, biology colloquium and thesis or Clinic project. A new course, Data Science for Global Change Biology taught by Assistant Professor of Climate and Biology Jessica Guo, will be required of all students pursuing the major.

Hawkins says the program’s courses, as with most offered by the Hixon Center, are open to students from across The Claremont Colleges who are not necessarily biology majors. “Hixon courses are educating interdisciplinary students across the consortium, and it’s very exciting that new faculty are developing courses of interest to a variety of students,” says Hawkins.

Students entering 91̽�� Mudd in the fall 2025 semester will be among the first with the option to elect biology–climate as their major. The College also offers joint majors in computer science and climate, and chemistry and climate. A mathematics and climate major is in development.

“From the early stages of launching our first Innovation Accelerator in fall 2024 and receiving 21 outstanding proposals, to presentations and pitches at our first Innovation Showcase last spring, and now to our three projects selected to advance, this has been an outstanding celebration of innovation at 91̽�� Mudd,” said President Harriet Nembhard. “It was truly a joy to witness the creativity, collaboration and community support that brought these outstanding proposals to life—each one advancing key aspects of our strategic plan.”

Launching Innovation Accelerator Laboratories

These inaugural Innovation Accelerator Laboratory (IA Lab) projects will integrate the high-impact research, hands-on learning and exceptional curricular innovation intrinsic to 91̽�� Mudd. By uniting faculty, students, alumni and community partners, these initiatives will create new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, real-world problem-solving and the application of cutting-edge tools and methods in STEM. Whether advancing ethical data science for social impact, expanding biomedical engineering and health technology pathways, or creating new curricular models that foster student success in the College’s rigorous Core Curriculum, each project blends research excellence with immersive learning experiences. 

Leading a STEM Education Renaissance

Together, they embody the College’s vision of STEM for a Better World, and serve as key examples of the College’s ongoing efforts to lead a renaissance in STEM education through its unique approach to integrating the humanities, social sciences and the arts with STEM fields to prepare engaged and civically minded leaders who are prepared to address the greatest challenges facing our world—both now and in the future.��

The College’s first Innovation Accelerator Laboratories were selected with input from an evaluation team of internal and external stakeholders as well as the President’s Cabinet. The Innovation Accelerator issued its first call for proposals in fall 2024, and community members submitted 21 proposals for review. From this group, several ideas were selected to begin immediate implementation. Of the remaining submissions, the field was narrowed from 21 to six teams that were given funds to begin testing their ideas. These six teams presented at the College’s first Innovation Showcase in spring 2025, and three teams were selected to receive up to $240,000 in funding to begin developing their ideas further. The three selected projects are:

Innovation Accelerator Laboratory for Data Science and Social Impact

Twelve proposers from the areas of life sciences, entrepreneurship, community engagement, mathematics, climate science, chemistry and computer science will leverage data science to address societal challenges. The team envisions making 91̽�� a national hub for leveraging data science to address societal challenges by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, advancing data science research and creating pathways to apply data-informed methods to real-world issues. Through conferences, datathons, workshops and deep partnerships with community-based organizations, they will connect data scientists, students and practitioners to co-develop impactful solutions in areas such as climate, education and health.

The team believes an emphasis on ethical frameworks, interdisciplinary research and real-world applications can accelerate the integration of social impact into STEM fields worldwide, promoting a new generation of data scientists trained to address the world’s most pressing challenges.

Innovation Accelerator Laboratory for Emerging Health Technology

Proposers from the fields of biology, engineering and computer science will expand career pathways for 91̽�� Mudd students into biomedical engineering and health sciences by creating a robust support system that includes alumni networking, partnerships with academic and industry leaders, and hands-on research opportunities. By showcasing these opportunities and leaning into alumni networks in health-related careers, the team aims to inspire current and prospective students while solidifying 91̽�� Mudd’s reputation as a leader in training future innovators in biomedical engineering and health technology.

Health sciences rely on data, engineering and artificial intelligence tools, and this initiative highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches in modern healthcare. By fostering innovation and expanding career pathways, the program can inspire other organizations to adopt similar strategies, ultimately improving healthcare outcomes and advancing medical research worldwide.

Innovation Accelerator Laboratory for Thriving in the Core Curriculum

Proposers span the fields of academic affairs, physics, institutional diversity, chemistry and biology. They note that 91̽�� Mudd’s Core Curriculum, while foundational for developing STEM expertise and intellectual curiosity, can present significant challenges. Yet, through a tailored support program that addresses both academic and social needs, the College can increase academic achievement and joy in the Core Curriculum, thus fostering a sense of community and belonging. The team will provide structured resources from pre-first-year summer through the sophomore year, including skills preview sessions, a Summer Institute, customized one-on-one tutoring, and cohort-based mentoring with both faculty and student mentors.

Collectively these programs will build a strong community that empowers students to thrive in the Core, achieve academic success and develop a lasting sense of belonging. This initiative can provide other institutions with a replicable blueprint for creating inclusive, supportive environments that empower students to succeed in STEM, contributing to a more diverse and resilient global STEM workforce. Also, it can make STEM education more equitable and accessible to all students of diverse backgrounds, ultimately enhancing STEM innovation and research outcomes, which drive progress in scientific and technological fields.

Collectively these programs will build a strong community that empowers students to thrive in the Core, achieve academic success and develop a lasting sense of belonging. This initiative can provide other institutions with a replicable blueprint for creating inclusive, supportive environments that empower students to succeed in STEM, contributing to a more diverse and resilient global STEM workforce. Also, it can make STEM education more equitable and accessible to all students of diverse backgrounds, ultimately enhancing STEM innovation and research outcomes, which drive progress in scientific and technological fields.

Going Farther Together

During the 2025–2026 academic year, the selected teams will begin the work described in their proposals, with regular progress reports submitted to the President’s Cabinet and shared with the College community. Requests for future project proposals are planned for the Innovation Accelerator, the key engine developed by the College as part of its strategic planning goal on innovative education to engage the community in cultivating forward-thinking possibilities for the future of 91̽�� Mudd.

Visit the Innovation Showcase website to see highlights from the event, including recordings of the team project pitches, a as well as videos of the and sessions.

To recognize efforts in overcoming hardship to achieve success in chemistry, ACS provides a monetary award of $250 and a $1,000 travel stipend to the ACS Fall 2024 Meeting & Exposition, “Elevating Chemistry,” that will be held in Denver, Colorado, this August. While there, Baez will attend networking events allowing her to interact with other award recipients, members of the WCC and ACS leaders.

Baez says she always knew she wanted to be a scientist but wasn’t sure how she’d get there coming from a low-income background where science wasn’t always valued. Born and raised in Palm Desert, California, she is the eldest daughter of Julian and Mireya, who immigrated from Mexico. Baez decided to apply to 91̽�� after learning about its rigorous Core curriculum and policy for meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need. The fact that she’s now studying chemistry at Mudd feels like a giant gift, she says.

In pursuit of her dream of becoming a chemistry professor, Baez is utilizing 91̽�� Mudd’s wide range of opportunities. She is focused on her research with chemistry professor Spencer Brucks, whose group she joined in her sophomore year with support from a Kubota Research Fellowship. Her research project examines the relationship between polymer shape and degradability, with the hope of making plastics easier to recycle. She recently presented a poster of her work at the 2024 ACS National Spring Meeting in New Orleans, with travel expense support from an ACS Bridge Travel and Professional Development Award. She was also recently named an ACS Scholar.

“Britney has a rare passion for chemistry and excels at independently driving her research,” says Brucks. “She is a highly valued member of our group and the entire chemistry department. We are fortunate to have her as part of the HMC community and look forward to her continued success.”

As a junior, Baez served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Organic Chemistry I and II and will be a TA for Organic I again this fall. Outside of the lab, she works as a campus tour guide and helps co-teach an Intro to Engineering course to inmates at the California Rehabilitation Center through the Prison Education Project. After graduating from Mudd, Baez plans to attend graduate school for chemistry to study some flavor of organometallic catalysis.

Baez says, “After getting a taste of olefin metathesis from my current research project, I look forward to exploring other flavors such as photoredox catalysis.”

Her long-term goals include earning a PhD and teaching chemistry at a college or university.

The GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. Program participants are seen as future experts who will contribute significantly to research, education and innovation in the STEM fields.

James Clinton ’24 (engineering) has worked closely with physics professor Mark Ilton to study spring-driven mechanisms for robotics and has analyzed the impacts of different design parameters on the performance of spring-driven jumping robots. Clinton is developing a mechanism, inspired by slingshot spiders, to understand how control, spring properties, and scaling impact system performance. He also worked with Anthony Clark, a computer science professor at Pomona College, to develop a locomotion mechanism that transforms between wheels that operate on flat surfaces and larger, spoked wheels for rough terrain and climbing. Last summer, Clinton participated in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, working with Zeynep Temel. Clinton worked on a reconfigurable robot swarm, developing arm mechanisms for enhancing locomotion capabilities of the robots, enabling them to climb up and down obstacles.

Clinton is president of 91̽�� Mudd’s chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. He also helps organize events for Mudd Advocates, a peer support organization, and is co-president of MuddSub, a group developing a fully autonomous underwater robot for the annual RoboSub competition. He is a machine shop proctor and makerspace repair steward. Clinton plans to pursue a PhD in mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara and work on robotic mechanism design. He’s interested in a career in academia.

Ryan O’Hara ’24 (environmental robotics and computer science/mathematics) founded the first-ever, student-run 91̽�� Mudd Clinic project, funded by the 776 Fellowship he received in 2023. His Clinic team succeeded in its goal of building a robot capable of identifying and removing purple sea urchins from marine ecosystems in order to support kelp conservation efforts. O’Hara is finishing up a research internship with NASA’s Ames Research Center, where he developed an algorithm capable of analyzing and predicting the contrails formed by commercial flights; the end goal is to use this work to develop flight plans that minimize contrail formation and dramatically decrease the aviation industry’s role in climate change).

A leader in climate activism and policy, O’Hara has written several of the United Nation’s and IPCC’s key climate documents and recently attended the UN’s world climate summit, COP28, in Dubai to advocate for a global transition away from fossil fuels—”which, excitedly, we were able to get every country to agree to for the first time in history,” he says.

After 91̽�� Mudd, O’Hara will begin a full-time job at UC San Diego working with other researchers to develop nanotherapies and nanoparticles to more effectively deliver disease therapies. He’s interested in the overlap between disease formation and environmental damage and finding ways to treat those who develop life-threatening illnesses due to exposure to pollutants. In the long-term, O’Hara hopes to pursue an MD-PhD and continue to work on developing therapies to treat those hurt by environmental damage and pollution and influence policy formation that mitigates the health hazards associated with environmental damage and climate change.

William Yik ’24 (computer science and mathematics) has done research at three institutions while at 91̽�� Mudd. From his first summer (2021) through spring 2023, he worked in the AMISTAD Lab with 91̽�� Mudd computer science professor George Montañez studying novel two-distribution hypothesis testing methods for identifying bias in machine learning training data. Yik also worked with a fellow AMISTAD member, Cynthia Hom ’23, on finding finite-sample bounds for those two-distribution hypothesis tests. From summer 2022 through the present, he’s done research on climate model emulation with neural networks and climate forecast equity at the University of Southern California with Sam Silva, a professor of earth sciences, civil and environmental engineering, and population and public health sciences. Since summer 2023, Yik has worked with professor Maike Sonnewald (UC Davis) at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory on ensemble deep learning methods for subsurface ocean inference. His summer 2023 internship was funded by an ,

At 91̽�� Mudd, Yik is as an Academic Excellence mathematics tutor, and a member of the Claremont Braineaters, the 5C men’s club ultimate frisbee team. After graduation, Yik plans to pursue a PhD in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington where he will study data-driven methods for Earth system modeling. A career in climate predictability interests him.

The study, “Evolution of bioluminescence in anthozoa with emphasis on octocorallia,” was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the main research journal of The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Fellow co-authors include Danielle DeLeo, research associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH); Steve Haddock ’88, senior scientist and marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute; and Andrea Quattrini, curator of corals at NMNH and a former postdoc researcher (2015–2019) in McFadden’s lab.

McFadden has spent years researching the diversity of octocorals, expert ecosystem designers who build their own animal forests along dark sea floors and prey on passing organic material. At 91̽�� Mudd, McFadden and Quattrini worked together to intricately map the evolutionary trees of various species of octocorals, providing a framework for their relationships. At the time, the tools they developed to make these maps were novel for research in the field; now, they’re used by research labs worldwide.��

Bioluminescent proteins produced by octocorals are harvested and used widely in biomolecular research. The impetus for the study published this month was a desire to understand which octocorals produce bioluminescent proteins, how the organisms who do so relate to one another, and when the ability to make the proteins evolved. “Understanding the genetic and evolutionary path of bioluminescence in octocorals—which species have the ability to make bioluminescent proteins, the genes involved in creating the proteins, and how the trait itself has evolved—can help us further develop applications for bioluminescence in molecular biology and biomedicine,” says McFadden.��

In addition to its potential for further application in biomolecular research, the study will be the first that dates bioluminescence among octocorals in evolutionary terms. “Historical analysis has suggested that it’s a trait that evolved a very long time ago in organisms it occurs in,” says McFadden. “In crustaceans, it may have been 250 million years ago and in others, such as fireflies, it may have been more recent. The distribution of this trait we’ve seen in octocorals suggests it evolved for them more than 550 million years ago, suggesting they would have been among the first bioluminescent animals.”����

Possible reasons for bioluminescence as a trait among many of the organisms that exhibit it include producing signals for attracting mates, communicating with other organisms and protecting oneself from predators. But researchers have wondered why octocorals, as organisms without eyes, would have the capacity to bioluminesce. They now believe that, for octocorals, the trait may have evolved to ward off predators or, a more magical explanation, according to McFadden: “Deep-sea octocorals have evolved this trait while shallow-water corals don’t have the same ability to bioluminesce, suggesting it could be a form of deep-sea illumination and signaling in a place where there aren’t sources of light.”

Enter 91̽�� biology professor Danae Schulz and her students, who hope their research about how this parasite adapts to its two different hosts could lead to the design of effective new strategies for treating the disease.

The Schulz lab focuses on understanding how gene regulatory proteins called bromodomain proteins interact with the DNA as parasites transition from the blood to the insect. Over the last year, research on the topic by Schulz and several former students has been published in two scientific journals. Here is a summary of the work.

“,” published in Current Research in Chemical Biology, is authored by Becca Blyn ’22, Gracyn Buenconsejo ’22, Eric Tang POM ’21, 91̽�� research technologist Melvin Hodanu, Schulz and students from The Wistar Institute and Thomas Jefferson University.

Trypanosoma brucei cycles between a bloodstream form in mammals and a procyclic form in the gut of its insect vector. Schulz and her students previously discovered that a human bromodomain inhibitor causes transcriptome changes that resemble the transition from the bloodstream to the procyclical form. Schulz says, “We’ve long wondered whether small-molecule bromodomain inhibitors may have other targets in African trypanosomes that might support spontaneous differentiation of bloodstream parasites to the fly stage. Using the molecules produced and analyzed in this paper, we might finally be able to answer that question.”

“,” published in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal Microbiology Spectrum, is coauthored by Jennifer Havens ’18, Lindsey Rollosson ’20, Ethan Ashby POM ’21, Schulz and Pomona College mathematics professor Johanna Hardin.

Understanding the gene-regulatory processes that facilitate transcriptome remodeling in Trypanosoma brucei may shed light on how these mechanisms evolved. “We’ve known for a long time that chemical inhibition of bromodomain proteins results in spontaneous differentiation of bloodstream parasites to the insect stage, but the effect of bromodomain inhibition on gut stage parasites was harder to study because, until recently, people didn’t know all of the genes involved in moving from the gut stage to the salivary gland stage in the fly,” Schulz says.

This paper reports that gene expression is also affected by chemical bromodomain inhibition in insect-stage parasites but that the genes affected differ depending on life cycle stage. Because trypanosomes diverged early from model eukaryotes, an understanding of how trypanosomes regulate gene expression may lend insight into how gene-regulatory mechanisms evolved. This could also be leveraged to generate new therapeutic strategies.

“With the publication of RNA-seq datasets characterizing changes in transcript levels of the relevant genes, we were finally able to analyze whether chemical inhibition of bromodomain proteins in gut stages pushes parasites toward the salivary gland stage,” Schulz says.

After Schulz and her students perfected their adaptation of CUT&RUN, Schulz decided to make their process public and accessible to any other scientists who might need it. The Schulz lab protocol “,” is now available in PLOS ONE, an open-access journal that publishes rigorously reported and peer-reviewed research for the benefit of the wider science community.

“Adapting the technique to our parasite proved the most difficult part of this project,” says Schulz. “It was around three years of work just to get the process optimized. The CUT&RUN technique is quite a bit faster than other techniques that have been used in the past to map protein DNA interactions.”

Protocols.io and PLOS ONE spotlighted Schulz’s research in a recent . Schulz describes how she and her students adapted the CUT&RUN technique for their research, what they tried that worked—and what didn’t—and why they decided to make their work open-access.

Schulz says part of her motivation for making the protocol available was the benefit to her students. “My undergraduates worked on this for years. It was really hard for us to get it working, so I thought it was nice for them to have another peer-reviewed publication out of all those efforts.” It was also important to her that her students see her model being open and explicit with new techniques as soon as possible so that other scientists can use the information in their own research.

Funds from Schulz’ Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation supported this research. NSF grants are the largest share of external support for faculty research at 91̽�� Mudd.