A conversation with Beth Shapiro, biologist and MacArthur Fellow

Conversations with Women in Science

Written by Chelsea Wald

Monday, 12 October 2009

Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary biologist who traces the history of recently extinct or endangered species using ancient DNA. Last month, she became one of the latest members of the MacArthur Fellows Program, popularly called the“Genius Grant.” Nominated in secret by top scholars, candidates never know they are under consideration until they are notified that they have won.

Beth, 33, is an assistant professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University. She spoke to Under the Microscope about her work, her new award, and her plans for her soon-to-be born child.

Under the Microscope: You study ancient DNA. What do you hope to learn?

Beth Shapiro: Some of [my research] is looking at fundamental questions about evolutionary biology. For example, how populations evolve and how things likes climate change or changes in community composition – like the introduction of new predators or competitors through time – influence the structure and diversity of different populations. With ancient DNA, we can actually see these changes as they're occurring.

Other aspects include focusing more specifically on the influences of climate change on genetic diversity within populations. For example, we hope to learn what specific environmental factors are most important in maintaining genetic diversity within populations … [such as] the polar bears.

UTM: How do you find ancient DNA?

BS: We use remains that are preserved and stored in museums, or we go into the field and find new remains as they become unearthed. I do a lot of my work in the Arctic, and that's because there are a lot of bones that have been preserved in the permafrost.

We go to gold mining sites. They spray down the permafrost with these hoses ... and it basically just takes away the landscape and just flattens it out. All of the gold is in the gravel within these landscape structures, but so are the bones. So they keep the gold and we keep the bones and everybody's happy.

We … bring those things back to the lab. And in the lab we will extract DNA and amplify them using different ways, and we also spend some of our time devising new statistical approaches to looking at DNA sequences that we followed... over all these long time periods.

[With DNA from the permafrost] we can go back as old as it's possible to go back biochemically, which seems to be maybe a couple hundred thousand years. From warmer places it's a bit harder. From some really hot, wet places you possibly can't recover any DNA after only a couple of decades, so it makes a big difference where they've been preserved.

UTM: How did you get involved in this type of research?

BS: There was an exciting lab when I started my Ph.D. at Oxford that I got involved in. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to do something that involved evolutionary biology. I had an interest in paleontology and geology, and this was a nice blend of all my interests.

UTM: Why do you think your work was singled out for the MacArthur Fellowship?

BS: I have no idea. I wonder sometimes if it isn't all just part of an elaborate practical joke. I mean, there are a lot of people out there who are doing exciting, new research.

Ancient DNA is a small field and it gets a lot of attention because of things, like, the excitement of potentially bringing back a mammoth, which I don't think is going to happen or a very interesting goal to have.

UTM: What are you going to do with the $500,000 prize money?

BS: You get it over the course of 5 years, so it's about $100,000 a year, and that will be extremely useful just to put into my research budget. Ancient DNA is often difficult to fund using the traditional funding methods because they like to know what you're going to do is going to work right away and give really exciting results right away. But when you get a bone out of the ground, you've got to spend a lot of money and effort before you even know if there's anything in it. And that sort of risk isn't the sort of risk that traditional funding agencies like to take. So this is just a really nice way to potentially get some preliminary data to show that some new ideas and new approaches are going to work.

It sounds like a lot of money, but for molecular biology, it's not actually that much money, unfortunately.

UTM: You're about to have a baby. What is your plan for balancing new motherhood with science?

UTM: That's a hard question. I waited until I had a tenure-track job, but I am not tenured, so I haven't waited until that process is finished. I think I just decided that there isn't ever really a good time.

I felt pretty confident that I knew the direction that my science was going to go, and that I have a good group of people that I trust and who I think are smart.

I think that definitely if you choose a career in science that you choose that over having a very young family, but for me that was the right decision … because my passion for life is a combination of my work and my family and I couldn't do without one or the other.

Here at the university there's daycare services and they do try to help out young women who have young families who are early in their career. ... [The baby is] going tothe field with me in the summer. I figure, he's going to be six months old, so I can strap him to my back and he won't be moving around yet.

I think the world is becoming a friendlier place, although it's not entirely friendly for people who want to do both things. But I think that as long as we just don't acknowledge the problem and decide that we're not going to have families … then we just propagate whatever problem there actually is. We have a responsibility to say, no, we want both of these things out of life and men can do it so why can't we.

UTM: What other advice do you have for young women in science?

BS: I think that maybe a lot of women – and I'm generalizing – don't have as much confidence in their own abilities as the young men that I see come through the program. And often this is really silly because the women who are coming through are actually better than the men. And maybe that's just because of the individuals that I've interacted with, but because they lack this confidence they just seem to stand back and let the men run the show, even at the level of graduate students.

I recognize that ... there is some form of discrimination against women in our profession, but … you just become part of the problem if you obsess about it and make a big fuss over it. Instead, just do good work, be a good scientist. Don't think of yourself as a woman scientist, think of yourself as a scientist. You're just as good as everybody else.

Photo courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.