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RISE was a great program. I learned how to do cloning and molecular genetics, and I was able to stay in the lab and build on that once I got to NC State.
Ben Carr
NC State senior Ben Carr and Dr. Jon Olson work in a darkroom at Olson's microbiology lab on campus.
By Suzanne Stanard, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Photo by Becky Kirkland
Before Ben Carr officially became a student in NC State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), he had already begun research that could have significant, global implications for human health.
During the summer before his freshman year on campus, Carr spent six weeks cloning genes in Dr. Jon Olson's microbiology lab. Carr had been awarded the opportunity through RISE (Reaching Incoming Student Enrichment), a competitive program for high school graduates that is sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
He chose Olson's lab because he wanted to major in microbiology. Those six weeks led to nearly four years of an evolving research program and a rewarding mentor-student relationship.
"RISE was a great program," Carr said. "I learned how to do cloning and molecular genetics, and I was able to stay in the lab and build on that once I got to NC State."
Olson, CALS associate professor of microbiology, remembers Carr from that summer lab as an enthusiastic but quiet student, trying to find his niche. He also recognized Carr's zeal for research and potential as a long-term student in his lab.
"Six weeks is no time in a scientific lab, but Ben was very disappointed in what he got done during those weeks," Olson said. "Although he did quite a bit of cloning, which is a feat in itself, he didn't get a mutant, and so I think he felt like his project wasn't complete.
"I remember telling him that he got a lot accomplished."
When Carr joined Olson's lab, Olson was studying Campylobacter jejuni, a pathogen which grows in chickens and causes food poisoning.
"Whenever you're working on an organism like this, making a mutant is a big deal," Olson says. "It also can be boring, working in a lab, waiting for results.
"So for the second part of Ben's project, we had a feeling that one of the things that the molecule was signaling the bacteria to do was make what's called a biofilm, which is a multicellular colony," Olson said. "There are advantages for bacteria to live in a community rather than as free-living organisms."
Scientists had also begun to notice at the time that C. jejuni does form these biofilms, Olson said.
"At the time we had no experience at all with biofilms," the professor said. "This was a great project for Ben to do every day while waiting for mutant to come. But it was challenging."
Carr agrees, but also says it was exciting to produce results.
"We developed a viable method... that was a modification of a method that other scientists were using for other bacteria," he said.
Carr has presented his research several times over the course of his undergraduate study, and in his junior and senior years, he won research award grants from the university's Undergraduate Research Office. And, as a senior honors student, Carr is still working on biofilms.
"We want to be able to track bacteria as it goes through biofilm stages," he said. "It's a pretty cool project."
So, how does it feel to be part of such important research as an undergraduate?
"When I first came to the university I had never done research before so I wasn't familiar with the whole process of scientific inquiry," Carr said. "The phrase researchers use is 'creating knowledge.'
"You're on the cutting edge of what people know, so you've got to look at what people know and where the gaps are, then figure out how to formulate those into research questions and come up with procedures that answer those questions," Carr said. "I learned how do to it through my work in this lab."
It's a mantra he's lived by in his undergraduate experience, and one he'll take with him into his professional career.
Carr, who has shadowed physicians at Duke Raleigh Hospital, is applying to medical school in hopes of becoming a surgeon.
"Ben is a true member of this lab," Olson says. "He's on the lab meeting schedule. He presents to the whole group and they have to understand what he's done. Not everybody who comes through the lab reaches that status."
What did Olson take away from his experience with Carr? "There's a lot of satisfaction in seeing somebody grow into a competent, accomplished researcher," Olson says. "We've got a project that will certainly outlive Ben. He's helped us develop a good foundation. The real hope is to create some knowledge here that's going to improve human health."
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of Perspectives: The Magazine of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
