one of the endeavors of science is to have the power to predict phenomena , yet my career trajectory has been anything but predictable . from an early age i knew i wanted to be a scientist , but just what kind of science was less certain .
i spent many hours as a child looking through my mail order telescope at the moons of jupiter and the rings of saturn .
i was convinced i would become an astronaut and then as i got older , perhaps just an astronomer .
however , i was quickly drawn to math and theoretical physics , instead of astronomy . but after a summer research fellowship through the college of creative studies at the university of california , santa barbara where i learned to use the atomic force microscope to image dna , i became fascinated with the kinds of questions that biologists ask .
i joined the biochemistry , cellular and molecular biology graduate program at johns hopkins university school of medicine .
i knew i had a lot to catch up on because i had only taken one or two courses in biology as an undergraduate and the hopkins program was known for its rigorous first - year curriculum .
the core courses were very tough , and i quickly learned that vectors were more than just a representation of direction and magnitude . at hopkins , incoming graduate students were fortunate to have graduate student mentors who had gone through the process .
she thought that if i was having so much trouble with molecular biology i would surely not pass genetics .
but finally my training in physics and deductive reasoning came to my rescue , and i passed genetics with flying colors .
after joining one lab and realizing that it was not the home for me , my life took another unexpected turn .
my boyfriend ( now husband ) was in tom pollard 's lab , which partway through our graduate careers relocated to the salk institute .
i followed my husband to san diego and joined the pollard lab , which was probably one of the best choices i have made .
i took up two projects : searching for an actin homolog in archaea and purifying myosin ii from the yeast schizosaccharomyces pombe , neither of which was known at the time to exist in those respective organisms .
luckily for me the s. pombe genome project was underway and within a month or so of joining the lab , i discovered a myosin ii in the database and proceeded to knock it out .
this was my first foray into reverse genetics , and having seen how powerful this approach can be , i 've never looked back since then .
i immediately felt at home with genetics and had by that time become very comfortable with molecular biology .
being at the salk institute was also critical , because susan forsburg , a prior wicb junior awardee , made a home for me in her lab while the pollard lab moved to the salk .
i had the best of both worlds : two incredibly supportive and rigorous advisors ( one in genetics and one in biochemistry ) .
one week , i happened to choose a paper about the cytoskeleton in tomatoes for journal club .
having gained all my biology education at a medical school , i was only vaguely aware of research in plants .
i read a few more papers about the plant cytoskeleton and quickly discovered a huge gap in knowledge between the animal and plant cytoskeleton fields .
my graduate work focused on myosins , so i was curious to find out what classes of myosins were present in plants and what their functions might be .
just about then , some of the first myosin phylogenies were described ( hodge and cope , 2000 ; sellers , 2000 ) , and it was clear that plants had evolved their own unique myosins compared with other eukaryotes . from another journal club paper ,
i became aware of the moss physcomitrella patens and its unique ability among land plants to integrate foreign pieces of dna via homologous recombination ( strepp et al .
i was pleasantly surprised to discover that ralph quatrano , a pioneer in the field of the plant cytoskeleton , was establishing p. patens as a model system in his lab at washington university in st .
when i first joined the quatrano lab , genomic resources in moss were scarce , so i used traditional methods to clone out three distinct partial myosin clones . after using homologous recombination to knock out these three myosins without any obvious phenotypic consequences ,
since then , the ability to perform gene targeting and efficient rnai together with growing genomic resources ( including a completed genome ) has served as the basis for my research program . among other studies
, we recently uncovered an essential role for class xi myosins in polarized growth ; myosins are important after all ! given the wide range of questions surrounding the role of actin dynamics in plant cell growth , we have plenty to keep us busy for years to come .
i have been lucky to assemble a group of enthusiastic and talented postdocs and students , and we have begun to chip away at these questions using many different approaches .
we have developed many tools that have expanded the capabilities of the facile reverse genetics system in p. patens .
our rnai methodology is rapid and enables phenotypic discovery within a week of transformation ( figure 1 ) .
complementation studies are the cornerstone of our research , enabling us to directly address the in vivo significance of our hypotheses . finally by collaborating with others in the field
, we aim to marry in vitro knowledge of protein function with in vivo mechanisms of action .
class ii , not class i , formins are essential for polarized growth in moss .
top , three plants harbor an rnai construct silencing all class i and iii formins .
running an academic research lab has simultaneously been the most challenging and the most rewarding part of my career .
the main challenge is balancing my new responsibilities  particularly managing the lab and mentoring my postdocs and students  with committee work and teaching .
i have also learned that the colleagues who surround me are far more important than the physical space my lab occupies .
supportive colleagues have helped me to craft a collaborative environment in my lab and among neighboring labs .
my graduate training in fission yeast genetics within a biochemistry and biophysics lab was a unique experience that still guides my research today and the philosophy by which i mentor my students and postdocs . from the forsburg lab
, i learned a wealth of genetics , but most importantly i learned to be keenly observant .
one of the most important take - home lessons from the pollard lab was that you should do whatever it takes to answer the biological question .
 although i always knew i wanted to be a scientist , i did n't know i would become a cell biologist . 
 events in life that you would never have predicted can greatly impact your career trajectory . 
 i have learned to let those events take me in new directions . 
 following a desire to investigate an understudied area of cell biology , i have found a niche . in this area , 
 my lab is poised to contribute significantly toward understanding the fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying polarized plant cell growth . 
BEGINNINGS IN PHYSICS AND THEN BIOLOGY
THE FUNGAL CYTOSKELETON
THE PLANT CYTOSKELETON
LESSONS FROM THE PRESENT AND PAST