By Lou Dennig
Staff Writer

Chemistry professor Paula Schlax recently received a $271,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct student-assisted research on bacterial stress responses over the next three years.

Her research, which will include student assistance, is set to discover how bacterial cells can survive when exposed to serious stresses through “exposure to acid, exposure to temperatures that are not ideal and starvation.”

“The idea is to turn on an expression of a gene that’s needed in a given time in a cell and a whole series of events have to occur in the cell in the right order for that to happen. I’m trying to understand the choreography of those events,” said Schlax.

The award is Schlax’s first major grant, but not the first for the department. “When the NSF and the National Institute of Health (NIH) see the fact that [Bates Professors] have had these grants, they recognize that people have been successful with them, and it helps people who haven’t had a grant from them get them with the help of the Bates name,” said Schlax. “When I was looking at places to work, I was looking for a place where people had been successful at getting major grants.”

One important aspect of her research, according to Schlax, is the hands-on involvement of her students. “One of the best parts of coming to a school like this is that [the students] can be involved in research like this with an advisor. Bates, in general, does this really well; the students who do it should be proud of it and other students should try to do it,” said Schlax.

For her research, Schlax will be hiring a research assistant for the last two years of the grant and will work with two Bates students per summer and two to four thesis students per year for the next three years.

Schlax’s research, which will begin with studying pairs of molecules and increase to sets of three and more over time, will lead her to more advanced research. “In the really long term it would be fun to figure out why some bacteria control the stress response in different ways from other bacteria at the molecular level,” said Schlax.

Students doing research under Schlax will design experiments that focus on specific aspects of the research that would be “most helpful to them,” writing papers based on the findings, and even helping Schlax present the materials when the studies are complete. Bates students “should get involved in research, and we have great projects coming up for them, it’s one of the best parts of Bates,” said Schlax.




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