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Gene expression in chromosomal Ridge domains : influence on transcription,
mRNA stability, codon usage, and evolution
Gierman, H.J.
Publication date
2010
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Gierman, H. J. (2010). Gene expression in chromosomal Ridge domains : influence on
transcription, mRNA stability, codon usage, and evolution.
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165 Curriculum vitae
10
Curriculum Vitae
I remember when DNA first got a hold of me. I was in my third year of high school, and my mother took me and my brother to see Emmen Zoo. After entering the park, which undoubtedly had many wonderful animals, I spotted a large exhibition tent which drew my attention. I mumbled some words to my mother, and before I knew it I had spent the next three hours wandering about this huge poorly lit tent, with hundreds of displays on genetic engineering (mostly alone as I recall). This was back in the early 90’s, so I had no cell phone to draw me back into reality. The reality was that we were headed to Groningen Academic Hospital to see my dad. After losing his own father to cancer, my dad got cancer himself. Every few weeks he travelled to Groningen and underwent heavy chemotherapy treatments for many months, which luckily cured him for good. Years later, these experiences somehow came back as a subconscious boomerang and strongly motivated me to work on cancer.
But first, I graduated from high school in 1995 and thanks to Emmen Zoo, I was one of the lucky few that knew what he wanted to study. I went to Wageningen University to study Biotechnology, and was thrilled that within a few weeks we were genetically transforming bacteria (although we were clueless to what it was we were doing). In the mean time, I cofounded a political student party (VeSte) and after getting elected, left college for a year to work at the University Council. A great year in which I learnt about all that is not DNA. I finished my BSc and in 2000 started my first MSc thesis project at the Microbiology lab of Willem de Vos in Wageningen. Supervised by Thijs Ettema en John van der Oost, I got a great taste of Archaea genetics, as we isolated an unidentified metabolic enzyme. Then, for the love of meat, and the meet of a love, I jumped the ocean and settled in the foothills of the Argentine Andes. For half a year, I eagerly refreshed my biochemistry skills in the welcoming lab of Daniel Bustos at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan. I worked feverishly isolating biotransformed diterpenes (and in weekends honed my ‘asado’ skills), which paid off as we found some novel compounds.
Back home, the boomerang had returned, and I really wanted to work on cancer. A previous study visit to the AMC led me to Rogier Versteeg’s lab, and early 2002 I was talking to Dirk Geerts. But instead of cancer, we talked about this new discovery, RNA interference. Shortly after, I was trying to knockdown genes with short hairpin vectors for my third MSc thesis project. I really liked the people in the lab, I liked Amsterdam and especially the project. But somehow, Rogier Versteeg convinced me to (reluctantly) take on another project: the Human Transcriptome Map. It took me a week to realize Ridges were really, really interesting, and I have spent these years working on difficult but very exciting research that has lead to successful projects in our own lab, but also in collaboration with the lab of Roel van Driel.
Although I partly wanted to do something new, I so much enjoyed working on gene regulation that I was reluctant to leave the field. I think I have found the perfect match, by jumping into the field of aging genetics in Stuart Kim’s lab at Stanford University, with the Californian sun as an added bonus. I doubt I will ever leave this tent.
