![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Friday, August 8, 2003
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Bringelson]](/images/2003/0808bringelson.gif)
Heading LT3
-- the Centre for Learning
and Teaching Through Technology --
is Liwana Bringelson, previously a research project manager in
the centre and also a research associate
professor in systems design engineering. Bringelson became interim director of
LT3 on July 1, for a one-year term. She takes over from Tom Carey, who had
been doubling as LT3 director and UW's
associate vice-president
(learning resources and
innovation). Carey will be focusing on the associate VP's
job from his new office in Needles Hall room 3005.
|
In a few months he and his research group will be moving to larger quarters downstairs. "We grew faster than we expected," says Duncker, an assistant professor of biology who came to Waterloo in November 2000, after a postdoctorate at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research.
In fact, his research in the behaviour of proteins involved in cell division has grown so well and looks so promising that he has just won a Canadian Cancer Society Research Scientist Award. The award's funding of $418,000 over six years will ensure that Duncker can devote 80 per cent of his time to research that may lead to earlier, more accurate detection of cancer and perhaps, farther down the road, to ways of controlling the disease.
His research material is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as budding yeast -- the same yeast used to bake bread and brew beer. "It's a model organism for cell research," Duncker says. "It's easy to grow and inexpensive (unlike human cells), it's easier to work with and manipulate genetically than human cells, and we have a lot more molecular tools available to work on it."
And a very important point: The processes that take place at the beginning of cell division are very well identified and characterized in yeast, very poorly defined in mammalian cells. But most cell division proteins in yeast have counterparts in human cells.
![[Duncker]](/images/2003/0811duncker.gif)
Duncker (right) and his team begin by identifying a particular
yeast protein
that's involved in cell proliferation -- the process in which a cell
grows by duplicating the DNA in its nucleus and then dividing into two.
"Once we identify a protein in yeast, we find out if it's also present
in the human cell, and the answer is usually yes, it is," Duncker says.
"Then we see if the protein behaves the same way in the yeast cell and
the human cell, and again the answer is almost always yes. There are
certain fundamental processes in nature that are basically the same in
all organisms."
And the point of identifying these proteins? Most cells in the body are not dividing rapidly, which means the proteins associated with cell duplication will be either absent, or present in low levels in normal cells. But cancerous cells are out of control, dividing rapidly, forming tumours. This is where you will find high levels of cell proliferation proteins. Using antibodies to detect and measure the levels of these proteins, you can identify biomarkers for cancer. (A biomarker is a substance that flags a particular biological process.)
"If you know how the cell division process is controlled, you can get a better idea of how the normal controls break down in cancer cells," Duncker explains. In a few years, this fundamental research may lead to strategies for not just detecting abnormal cell division, but controlling it.
Duncker's interest in genetics goes back to his undergrad days at the University of Ottawa, where he began working on plant genes. As a graduate student at Queen's he studied antifreeze proteins, later switching to cell division proteins at the inspiration of an enthusiastic postdoctoral supervisor.
If confirmation were needed that he made the right choice, here is the Canadian Cancer Society Research Scientist Award. Adding even more zest to the award is the knowledge that it's rarely been given to a researcher at a university without a medical school.
Which raises the question: As a researcher with a biomedical focus, why did Bernie Duncker decide on Waterloo instead of, say, Queen's? "I like the atmosphere at Waterloo -- it's a friendly place," he says. "And I think there's a lot of scope here to set up new types of collaborations."
He's begun working with four other professors at Waterloo, only two of them in biology. With Brendan McConkey, biology, he's exploring bioinformatics. With Brian Ingalls, applied mathematics, he's looking at modelling the cell cycle. In Eric Jervis's lab in chemical engineering, Duncker is using a powerful multiphoton microscope to get a 3D view of where proteins are located in the living cell at different stages of the cell cycle. A fourth collaboration involves comparing yeast and frog proteins along with John Heikkila, biology.
Speakers come from as close by as Wilfrid Laurier University (not to mention UW itself) and as far afield as British Columbia, Berkeley, and the University of London. Organizers are Michael MacDonald and Andrew McMurray, both faculty members in the English department's rhetoric and professional writing program.
Here, according to the conference poster, is something of what the title means:
"Handed down by the Greeks and codified by Cicero, Quintilian, and Saint Augustine, the art of rhetoric has dominated the production of knowledge in Western society for more than twenty-five hundred years, furnishing the discourses of law, science, politics, and philosophy with their modes of invention and styles of expression. In fact, as Roland Barthes once observed. the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition is so immense it encompasses a 'super-civilization -- that of the historical and geographical West.'
"In recent decades, however, scholars have begun to propose new interpretations of this 'empire rhétorique,' rereading the rhetorical tradition in light of feminism, literary theory, psychoanalysis, structural anthropology, and other modern theories of interpretation. What is the status of the rhetorical tradition and its 'world-empire' (Cicero) today?
"Through a series of keynote lectures and panel presentations by distinguished professors from Canada, Europe, and the United States, Inventio: Rereading the Rhetorical Tradition will explore the transfiguration of the rhetorical tradition taking place today across the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences."
Sessions will run today and tomorrow in the Arts Lecture Hall, with labels such as "Ancient Rhetoric", "Rhetoric and Social Theory", "Rhetoric and Politics", and "Rhetoric and Medicine". Individual papers have such titles as "The Rhetorical Re-Invention of Midwifery", "Figures of Vehemence in the Theatre of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo", and "9/11 and the Inventions of Hyperbolic Culture".
Keynote speakers will be Barbara Cassin of Université de Paris IV (today at 5:30), Rita Copeland of the University of Pennsylvania (tomorrow at 2:00), and Jonathan Culler of Cornell (tomorrow at 4:45, winding up the conference).
CAR