Biology

A longstanding SFSU-Cal Academy partnership enables high-caliber SFSU student research

The Galapagos Islands are famous for the discoveries that shaped Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now an SFSU graduate has added one more: Ezra Mendales (M.S., ’23) describes a new species as part of his master’s thesis.

“I feel super lucky with this project. I think we fell into this beautiful story that is really rare,” Mendales said of his work with SFSU Associate Professor Jaime Chaves and California Academy of Sciences Ornithology Curator Jack Dumbacher.

They found that the common Galapagos lava heron (Butorides sundevalli) is a distinct species, upending a decades-long assumption that it is a subspecies of the South American straited heron. 

“I’d say the vast majority of ornithologists alive today have never been part of a new species description,” said Dumbacher, who shares a lab with Chaves and was on Mendales’ thesis committee.

A mystery in plain sight

Convergence of stories

As an Ecuadorian, Chaves first visited the Galapagos Island with his family when he was 6 years old. The Galapagos Islands’ people, culture and wildlife became constants in his life. Chaves’ continuing fascination with the islands drives his research and work in the Galapagos community, which includes training tour guides. 

“You have to have this collaboration with the locals. Somebody who really knows the birds on the ground,” Chaves said. 

In this case, the local expertise came from Jason Castañeda, a Galapagos National Park ranger who helped the team catch the herons so they could collect blood samples. 

“He’s a co-author on our paper because it’s a substantial collaboration,” Chaves said.

While Chaves says the Galapagos draws students to the lab, Mendales, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Montana, is quick to credit his SFSU mentor instead. He first met Chaves in 2015 during an undergrad trip to the Galapagos and revered his expertise before coming to SFSU for his master’s work. 

“Getting access to not only the faculty at San Francisco State but the resources and employees at the California Academy of Sciences — it’s a match made in heaven,” Mendales said. 

Dumbacher, who has been at the Academy since 2003, was also familiar with Chaves’ expertise before Chaves became an SFSU professor. Establishing a joint lab to study the Galapagos was a natural extension of their interests and partnership. The Cal Academy alone has the world’s largest collection of scientific specimens from the Galapagos, dating back to 1905. 

“Working with Jaime has been one of the most fun things I’ve gotten to do in my career. It’s really rare that somebody like me at a museum will have a collaborator that is so aligned,” Dumbacher explained.

The root of your goal

“Our students have access to things a lot of students in other labs don’t have,” Dumbacher said about the strength of the SFSU-Cal Academy partnership. Students get to benefit from the Academy’s connection to biotech, local research institutions and companies creating new technologies. “Seeing somebody like Ezra, who was interested in but didn’t have the [molecular biology] background in the lab, go from zero to 80 so quickly was really fun.”

But Mendales says this experience has given him far more than just access to resources and expertise. His SFSU mentors recognized that students bring a wide range of backgrounds and interests to their work and helped him channel those experiences into a clearer sense of purpose. They encouraged him to think deeply about why he does the work he does. “What they [helped] me with was finding the root of my goal. Not what is my goal, but what do I want out of life,” he said. 

It’s an experience that echoes his mentor’s journey. Although Chaves became an SFSU professor in 2020, he first came to SFSU in 2002 as a master’s student. He studied hummingbirds with SFSU Professor Gretchen LeBuhn.

“I came in to do my master’s with a different perspective. I walked out of the lab the first day after I worked with DNA helping Professor Ravinder Sehgal, a postdoc at SFSU at that time. It changed my idea of research by 180 degrees,” Chaves said. He’s been using genetics to study bird evolution ever since. 

“The Biology Department at SFSU has an amazing record of placing their master’s students in Ph.D. programs,” Dumbacher said. “At SFSU you have a really high caliber of master’s students and also professors teaching them … It takes a special kind of professor that is good at research but is also a good teacher who is committed to teaching.”

Learn more about SFSU’s Department of Biology.

Graduate students supported by SFSU’s Student Enrichment Opportunities office complete Ph.D. programs, regardless of undergrad institution or GPA

When San Francisco State University alumna Muryam Gourdet (M.S., ’16) wanted to quit her Ph.D. program, she received a message from one of her former mentors in the SFSU Student Enrichment Opportunities (SEO) program: “Don’t quit. Come talk to me now.” 

She came back to campus to talk to SFSU Professor Teaster Baird, who was the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department Chair at the time and is now a College of Science & Engineering (CoSE) Associate Dean. Other SFSU mentors reached out to Gourdet — in person and by phone and email. Some even contacted faculty and program managers at Gourdet’s Ph.D. institution, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), to help in situations where she felt powerless. 

“It was full force,” she said.

Gourdet successfully finished her Ph.D. at UCSF. She also earned a mentorship award there — UCSF faculty started asking her for mentorship advice — and accomplished several other achievements along the way. After her Ph.D., she worked in industry for a few years.

It’s a story heard time and time again in SFSU’s SEO community.

“Once SEO, always SEO,” said SEO Director Megumi Fuse, a professor in the Department of Biology. 

Since the early 1990s, SEO has housed training grants for undergraduate and graduate students in CoSE, providing research opportunities, stipends, full tuition, career development opportunities, graduate application guidance and community. Although it mostly serves students in Biology and Biochemistry and Chemistry, SEO has impacted nearly all majors in the college at one point. 

In a new PLOS One paper, Fuse and collaborators at SFSU and California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) demonstrate that this system leads to master’s students enrolling in and successfully completing prestigious Ph.D. programs, regardless of undergraduate GPA. It supports the larger movement for a more holistic assessment of student success. 

SEO students wearing merch from their Ph.D. institutions

GPA isn’t everything

“We have this amazing pool of students that are hidden,” said Fuse. “Things like their GPA and need to work mask their ability to be successful. Once we give them money and mentorship, we see their true abilities.”

SEO supported over 500 students between 1992 and 2019. Eighty-nine percent of the 330 SFSU master’s students who applied to Ph.D. programs were accepted. Fuse's collaborators at CSULA’s MORE (More Opportunity in Research) office reported a similar pattern. Students enrolled in top research institutions such as UC Davis, UC Berkeley, University of Washington, UCSF, Harvard, Stanford and more. 

Network with insider insight

“I applied to San Francisco State and San José State. I basically made my decision based on the SEO support I was going to get,” said Dennis Tabuena (M.S., ’16), now a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institute. “I still think my favorite experience in research was the two years I spent at SFSU. It was probably the most productive years in my whole research career.”

Though Tabuena didn’t have the best grades as a UC Merced undergrad and only did research in his last year, he was able to transition to a biotech job. The problem was that he quickly discovered a career ceiling that required a Ph.D. to break. After a few unsuccessful Ph.D. application cycles, he decided to pursue a master’s degree as a stepping stone. 

SEO’s extended network was invaluable to Tabuena’s success earning a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Washington, Seattle. While SEO provided coaching, practice interviews and writing support, the office also brought university recruiters to talk about programs and provide a peek behind the admissions process. 

“I’ve been able to get big-name universities to come to SF State on their dime. They fly recruiters in; they pay for the hotels, the airfare,” Fuse explained. “UCSF, Stanford, Harvard — they come to SFSU to recruit. They realize that SFSU is a goldmine for students.”

Tabuena recalls some recruiters would even provide feedback on personal statements and answer questions via email. They provided insight that could only be provided by someone on admissions committees, something that was lacking in his industry experiences. 

SEO’s students and alumni themselves are critical to the health of the SEO ecosystem. As Gourdet prepared to leave industry, SEO connected her with alumni who had similar career experiences and trajectory. She has been coming back to SFSU two or three times a year for on-campus events.

SEO also provides undergrads with research experience. The number of undergraduate and graduate SEO alumni is in the hundreds. Alumni often stay connected with SFSU and participate in panels and other events with current students and faculty. 

The lasting SEO effect

“It’s so many layers of mentorship that hopefully [students] don’t fall through the cracks,” Fuse said. She and her collaborators built the SEO infrastructure with longevity and a culture shift in mind. “Students also learn to mentor the next generation. I think one thing you’ll find with low-income minority students is that they want to give back to their community.”

SEO scholars like Juan Mendoza (B.S., '03) have gone on to become professors carrying on the tradition of the high-caliber science and intentional mentorship at prestigious universities. 

Tabuena wants to stay in academia. As an SFSU student, he used to mentor community college summer interns, so he’s continuing to do this as a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone, a research institution affiliated with UCSF.

“We’re giving people that opportunity to get into the lab. These people are not in a position where [research experience is] readily available to them,” he explained. “It’s very important for me to keep doing that now that I’m on the inside.”

Thanks to her campus visits, Gourdet just started her dream position as program manager for SFSU Assistant Professor Archana Anand’s Phage Pathways program. The Department of Energy-funded program with two national labs is creating a pipeline to train students for the renewable energy workforce. 

“I tell students that the most important thing is the network you build, not the things you learn. You can learn material from anywhere; you can Google a lot,” Gourdet said. “But knowing the right people to guide your next steps is critical.”

Learn more about the Student Enrichment Opportunities (SEO) program at SFSU.

An in-class, on-campus student project explores the impact of a parasitic fly on honeybees

After a semester in a class, most students gain new knowledge, skills and maybe some new friends. For students in Assistant Professor Mitzy Porras’ Biology class, several undergraduates also walked away with a peer-reviewed research paper about zombie bees in a scientific journal — a major résumé boost for any student.

“Publishing a paper is kind of rare, especially as an undergraduate,” said Lioh Jaboeuf, first author of the paper published in the scientific journal Insects. On the first day of Porras’ undergraduate course “Bio 460: General Entomology” in fall 2024, Jaboeuf and some of his classmates chose to conduct a research project about the honeybees as their semester project. 

Honeybees play a critical role in urban ecosystems, pollinating the plants that support community gardens, street trees and backyard crops. However, they face many challenges, including parasitism by species like the parasitic fly Apocephalus borealis. The parasite lays its eggs inside a bee, and the larvae later force their way out, killing the bee. A 2012 SFSU study reported that before their untimely death, infected bees exhibit zombie-like behavior such as being disoriented, abandoning their hive and dying near sources of light. Porras’ class wanted to continue studying this parasite.

From September 2024 to May 2025, the SFSU team monitored honeybee populations at six different sites on the SFSU campus that included gardens with pollinators and herbaceous and woody plants, and near the science building where bees were previously collected. Parasitism rates fluctuated with the seasons — peaking in May when approximately 50% of bees were infected — and were closely linked to warmer temperatures and lower humidity.

“This study reinforces the need for long-term, seasonally informed monitoring of bee populations in urban areas. It serves as a powerful reminder that cities are dynamic ecosystems, and their resilience depends on how well we observe, understand and protect the species that keep them functioning,” Porras explained.

As a new professor at SFSU, Porras (who came to the University in fall 2024) prioritizes creating undergraduate classes that extend beyond standard curricula. 

“It’s critical to offer a research experience that allows students to have hands-on activities,” Porras emphasized. “While they’re learning concepts, they should have an opportunity to apply them and actually build their CV. That would be a plus for them when they go to the job market.”

Jaboeuf, an international student from France, participated in two internships before coming to SFSU but didn’t have experience with this level of data analysis, publishing or the process of responding to peer reviews via revisions. As an international student, doing scientific writing in English was an extra layer of learning that he appreciated. “The whole experience was very formative,” he said.

“To be involved from the start, carry out the project on your own terms and write a paper, revise it and do it as a group was a very good opportunity to understand how research works,” said Jaboeuf, who took Porras’ class during his semester at SFSU. “It was one of the best classes I took when I was in the U.S.”

Co-author Jenny Hoffmann (B.S., ’25), a transfer student, repeatedly heard that she needed research experience for her future as a biologist. Field research, however, can sometimes be difficult for students, especially if it’s in a remote location and coincides with other obligations. But Porras’ assignment circumvented this problem by keeping the field work close to home. 

“The project was done on campus, so it was very conveniently located,” said Hoffmann, who lived in the Towers at Centennial Square when the honeybees were being collected. “I could just go out and do the work in my community, which was so cool.” 

For Hoffmann, this project was part of her connection to the SFSU community, something she valued as a student and cherishes going forward.

“My favorite part of science is that it’s very collaborative and team-oriented,” she said. “I can’t wait to see where the next part of my journey takes me because I now have this SFSU community with me. I get to bring that to the next place I work, and I get to create community there. I’m so excited for that.”

Learn more about SFSU’s Department of Biology.

The new initiative provides stipends, lab support and opportunities for first-time and emerging researchers

Elmer Guzman didn’t always see himself as a researcher. A first-generation Chemistry senior at San Francisco State University, he wasn’t sure he belonged in a lab until this summer, when he became one of the first Gilead Innovation Initiative Scholars.

“It makes me feel proud of myself,” Guzman said. “Just seeing the recognition and knowing that there are opportunities trying to help students who are new to research makes me feel like there is a future to these things.”

Guzman is one of 30 student scientists who made up the first cohort of the Gilead Innovation Initiative at SFSU. The Gilead Foundation generously gifted $1.25 million in programmatic support to SFSU’s College of Science & Engineering (CoSE) via two awards during fundraising for the University’s new Science and Engineering Innovation Center (SEIC). In addition to supporting student research activities, the foundation also provided $3.75 million to outfit SEIC labs with state-of-the-art equipment and furnishings.

The Gilead Innovation Scholars — 11 undergraduate and 19 graduate students — were awarded $5,000 stipends to conduct research between June 1 and August 23. (Faculty members were also awarded a $1,000 honorarium for mentoring the scholars). Many of the student awardees were first-time researchers as well as students who had never received financial support for working in research labs. 

The Gilead award is unique in that it is inclusive of research activities throughout CoSE. It included at least one student from each of the eight CoSE departments and schools, supporting the training of astronomers, biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, geologists, mathematicians, physicists, psychologists and others. Projects ranged from molecular biology and ecology to nanoparticles, artificial intelligence, youth psychology and many other topics in science and engineering. 

‘I’m moving in the right direction’

Guzman spent the summer in Associate Professor Jingjing Qiu’s lab, exploring chemistry and renewable energy. He is testing the stability of gold and nickel in electrodes for the electrochemical oxidation of benzyl alcohol. His work could one day help make industrial chemical processes more sustainable. But for him, the more immediate outcome was confidence. 

“It feels like I’m moving in the right direction,” Raphaelian said, noting she wants to become a professor. “I hope to achieve many more grants in my lifetime. It’s making me feel like I’m capable and I’m supposed to be here.”

‘There’s an astrophysicist that looks like me!’

 A Ph.D.-bound grad student like Raphaelian, Gabriel Munoz Zarazua was always fascinated by the mysteries of the universe. But he didn’t always think he could be an astrophysicist. Thanks to his own perseverance and support from mentors (and the Gilead Foundation), he’s now an SFSU astrophysicist collaborating with researchers all over the nation. 

“Now I’m starting to see more. I just got back from a conference in Washington, D.C., and we talked about that,” he explained. “It was so amazing to meet other people that look like me. I want to be that for other students, for the next generation. For them to look up and think, ‘There’s an astrophysicist that looks like me. If they can do it, I can do it too.’” 

Learn more about SFSU’s College of Science & Engineering.

SFSU researchers have published a step-by-step tutorial for applying machine learning to drug resistance

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing health crisis that could lead to millions of deaths by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. Antibiotics are critical for human health, but many microbes are evolving resistance to one or more drugs. San Francisco State University researchers are among those using machine learning to predict drug resistance in patients. And they’re trying to remedy a related problem, too: the lack of resources that teach how to use machine learning to detect antibiotic resistance. 

In a new paper in PLOS Computational Biology, the SFSU team published a step-by-step machine learning tutorial for beginners. Other than Biology Professor Pleuni Pennings, the remaining seven researchers on the paper were undergraduate, graduate students and post-baccalaureate students; many were first-time researchers, and nearly all were new to machine learning. 

“We wanted to do a tutorial paper instead [of a research paper] because we thought it was more important to put out a teachable resource. We struggled to find one, so we wanted to make our own,” said co-first author Faye Orcales (B.S., ’21), who worked on the project as a post-bac.

“The students may not realize that it’s sort of bold [to submit this paper to PLOS]. It just shows that we do very high-quality work,” said Pennings, adding that the students really took ownership over the writing and pushing the manuscript forward.

Collaborating with faculty in Biology, Computer Science and Chemistry & Biochemistry, Pennings is the director or co-director for the undergraduate Promoting Inclusivity in Computing (PINC) program, graduate complement Graduate Opportunities to Learn Data Science (GOLD) and Science Coding Immersion Program (SCIP), an all-virtual, self-paced coding program for students, staff and faculty. All the student researchers initially learned coding and/or machine learning from one of these programs and then continued to develop their skills via longer-term research experiences. 

“One of my motivations to making all of these materials is because I’m teaching these classes and I wish there was a book about machine learning for health or biology. Something that is doable, fun and relevant. Something that’s intuitive, practical and discusses the ethical side,” said Pennings, noting that she’s already using this published tutorial in her classes.

“When I joined the PINC program, I could see that the instructors were motivated to teach coding in a very accessible way to Biology students. I felt really comfortable in the program because my peers were fellow biologists eager to learn,” said Orcales, now a computational scientist at UCSF applying to Ph.D. programs. She hopes this new tutorial will help introduce more of her peers into the machine-learning space. “I hope our readers take away that machine learning isn’t this daunting difficult thing to learn when you have the right resources.”

Visit SFSU’s Department of Biology to learn more about student opportunities like Promoting Inclusivity in Computing (PINC), Graduate Opportunities to Learn Data Science (GOLD) and Science Coding Immersion Program (SCIP).

The University will collaborate with other universities and two national labs to train students for the renewable energy workforce

Viruses have a bad reputation and for good reason. Despite their connection to disease, some viruses can be used for good. San Francisco State University Assistant Professor Archana Anand wants to address the knowledge gap about phages — viruses that infect bacteria — and their potential renewable energy applications, such as helping develop biofuels and mitigating methane emissions.

To achieve this goal, the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded Anand a $2.2 million grant for a new Phage Pathways program. By collaborating with national labs and other universities, the three-year program is poised to strengthen the pipeline for renewable energy microbiologists.

“The aim of this grant is to cultivate a new generation of microbiologists. But they will not be focused entirely on traditional microbiology but will focus on the intersection of microbial ecology and renewable energy,” said Anand. “I don’t think the academic needs have met the job needs in the renewable energy-microbiology ecology space.”

At the core of this program is SFSU’s partnership with Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) — two major DOE-funded institutions — and San Diego State University (SDSU), UC Davis and Skyline Community College. Together, they will update curricula in microbiology courses at the different universities, create new student research opportunities at each institution and provide students with cross-institutional mentorship for research, leadership and career development. Students will receive financial support for their participation. 

“This program could be impactful for students’ careers going forward,” said Anand of this DOE grant and the importance of collaborating with the national labs. She notes that there’s been an increase in these labs collaborating with institutions like SFSU. “Hopefully, the students will be really into this program and will come back to find a job in a similar setting.” 

A major part of Phages Pathways is to introduce more students into renewable energy and microbiology workforces. Each year, the Phage Pathways will recruit 20 undergraduate and graduate students from SFSU, SDSU, UC Davis and Skyline College. This annual cohort will include 10 SF State students (five third- and fourth-year undergraduates and five graduate students). Skyline students will participate in SFSU offerings. SFSU’s program will also complement Skyline’s SEA-PHAGES, a similar program restricted to first- and second-year undergrads. Anand explains that many of these students drop out of this workforce pipeline because they lack relevant training opportunities during their latter undergraduate years. 

“If they drop that continued exposure to this topic, then students do not have an interest in this and they do not develop the necessary skillsets,” Anand explained. “What we’re saying is that the [Skyline] students can feed into SFSU’s program.” 

During the school year, students will attend the updated microbiology courses at their home university and participate in research at SFSU, SDSU or UC Davis. They will also attend a three-day symposium at UC Davis with student presentations, workshops and keynote lectures.

In the summer, all participants will attend two multi-day research workshops created by SFSU and LBNL researchers. One weeklong bootcamp will teach students fundamental phage research techniques for phage discovery, such as phage isolation and characterization. The second workshop will teach students how to analyze and annotate phage genomics data. Each year, two students will be selected to attend an additional 10-week intensive research internship at SNL that focuses on wet lab and computational skills crucial for bioenergy applications. Throughout the year, the program will also offer various professional development activities that will be open to the Phage Pathways cohorts and students outside of the program. 

“To drive these breakthrough discoveries and move science forward, we should enable undergraduate and graduate students at all universities — not just at R1 institutions — but for everyone to engage in high impact research,” Anand said. “You never know who the next Einstein is going to be.” 

Learn more about SF State’s Department of Biology and apply for Phage Pathways online. 

Student research at SFSU leads to a new article on frog calls and deadly infections in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 

What noise does a frog make? Many of us would say “ribbit, ribbit.” Funnily enough, the Pacific tree frog (aka Pacific chorus frog) is the only species that really ribbits. (Listen to the variety of “peep,” “waaaaaaa,” “pa-tank,” and more sounds from other species on AmphibiaWeb.) Given how widespread Pacific tree frogs are in California, there’s a chance you’ve seen or heard their ribbits yourself. 

During mating season, female frogs in this species choose males based on variations in their call — something scientists find intriguing from an evolutionary standpoint. “If all females have the same preference for type of call, then why haven’t all males evolved to have the exact call and be uniform?” said Julia Messersmith (M.S., ’21). “One theory is the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis.”

The hypothesis connects male frog calls to their possible resistance to parasitism, a serious global problem facing amphibians. Messersmith studied this hypothesis for her master’s thesis at San Francisco State University and published her findings in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. She and two other SFSU students co-authored the paper with their faculty advisers, SFSU Biology Professor and Department Chair Vance Vredenburg and Associate Professor Alejandro Vélez (now at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

The 40-year-old Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis posits that male frogs’ mating call traits (or plumage traits in birds) are related to their health, specifically their resistance to parasitism. Like other amphibians, Pacific tree frogs are in danger of contracting Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a fungal pathogen killing amphibians worldwide. If the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis is right, it’s possible that female frogs are preferentially choosing the calls of “healthier” males. Although Bd infection is normally lethal, Pacific tree frogs sometimes fare better than other species — but this makes them effective carriers for disease who can spread the pathogen to other amphibians via water or direct contact.

“[Vredenburg] had a lot of trust in me and a lot of the undergrads in his lab. He let us do things that maybe wouldn’t be done in other labs, but I think totally could be done by a lot of undergrads,” Lutz said. As he’s progressed in his own career, he says that level of trust in undergrads is not always the case elsewhere. As an SFSU graduate student, his research experience even led him to collaborate with H.T. Harvey & Associates — a consulting firm providing ecological support to public agencies, private entities and nonprofits — and get a job with Applied Technology and Science, another consulting firm in the area.

“SF State is such a beautiful place for a growing scientist. They really allow you to reach your maximum potential,” Azar said. “They are there for you and want you to succeed.” 

Learn more about the SFSU Department of Biology.

Two new papers could help improve understanding of octopus arm function, development, evolution and more

Octopuses are fascinating. Their eight arms gracefully whip through water and can accomplish extraordinary tasks like using tools and opening jars. While humans have one spinal cord attached to their brain, in octopuses, it’s almost like each arm has its own spinal cord (minus the actual spine) and nervous system. These arms can even initiate a response without consulting the brain. 

How octopus arms can do all this at a cellular level has largely remained a neuroscience mystery — one that’s proved difficult to study because of technological limitations and the expense of research. But now San Francisco State University researchers are starting to provide answers. 

Trying to overcome those previous limitations, the San Francisco State researchers created three-dimensional molecular and anatomical maps of the inner neuronal circuitry of octopus arms. Their recent findings were published in two scientific papers in the journal Current Biology.

“Having [these two papers] converging at the same time means the amount we can learn from any single experiment is just astronomically higher,” SF State Biology Associate Department Chair and Assistant Professor Robyn Crook said of her lab’s research. “I would say these papers are really facilitating discovery in new ways.” 

This research was supported by an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised grant of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Crook’s Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) grant was the first recipient in the California State University (CSU) system since the grant’s inception in 2010. 

A traditional two-dimensional look at the octopus arm is comparable to taking a thin slice out of the middle of a fruit loaf. It’s difficult to know if distribution of fruits and nuts in that slice is representative of distribution and interactions throughout the loaf. Instead, postdoctoral fellow Gabrielle Winters-Bostwick and graduate student Diana Neacsu took multiple sections along the octopus arm to create 3D reconstructions of cell distribution and gross anatomy, respectively. 

The ADI project and Crook’s mentorship were instrumental for Neacsu, now a Ph.D. student at Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven in Belgium. During her two years in Crook’s lab, Neacsu gained advanced technical skills and networked and collaborated with more senior researchers, and now she has more scientific research papers in the pipeline. 

“Before I met her, I never really understood the concept of mentorship,” Neacsu said of Crook. “I kind of just thought [mentors] were teachers that are available during office hours.” 

Neacsu’s and Winters-Bostwick’s papers enabled a myriad of research opportunities both within Crook’s lab and beyond. Other labs have already showed interest in using these tools for cephalopod neuroscience research. 

The SF State team is looking at live tissues and seeing how they respond to chemical and mechanical stimulation, trying to understand neurons firing in real time. With the new 3D maps, they can make realistic predictions about what’s happening inside an octopus arm to create these responses. There are also a lot of evolutionary questions Crook’s lab is eager to answer. 

“Why do you have an animal with this much complexity that doesn’t seem to follow the same rules as our other example — humans — of a very complex nervous system?” Crook asked. “There’s a lot of hypotheses. It might be functional. There might be something fundamentally different in the tasks octopus arms have to do. But it could also be an evolutionary accident.”

Learn more about research in SF State’s Department of Biology.