The Power in Chemistry

Growing up on a prune orchard in central California, Kate Carroll's first brush with science was an elementary school program where students dissected cow organs, mostly eyes and lungs.

While those experiments didn't make a huge impact, her mother's decision to get a college degree when Carroll was seven, did.

"I saw her make that transition when she became a teacher. It made a big impression on me, seeing her go through the whole process of studying, and that was really great," Carroll remembered.

When Carroll left for college, she auditioned and was accepted as an oboe student at the Conservatory of Music in San Francisco. But after a year, in search of a more liberal arts education, she transferred to Mills College, a women's college in Oakland.

"It was very influential to see women faculty at Mills who were in positions of leadership. There were so many role models for me there."

Her favorite class by far was organic chemistry, because the process of discovery and analysis appealed to her.

"Scientifically, at the end of the day in chemistry, you have a solid in a flask or some kind of oil," she said. "You've made something! It may not be the product you were hoping for, but there are so many methods to characterize the isolated material, it can be a very rewarding puzzle to piece together."

In chemistry, she found that using the analytical tools at her disposal to help find absolute answers was satisfying and seemed to fit her personality. Synthesizing isoamyl acetate, the molecule that produces the characteristic odor of a banana, was a classic undergraduate lab experience for Kate, and crystallized her love of the process.

"The amazing thing to me was, at the end of the day, we had this substance, which was an oil and it smelled exactly like a banana, but we didn't it from a banana, we made it in the lab from two simple reagents, isoamyl alcohol and acetic acid."

While at Mills, Carroll benefited tremendously from the small class sizes and close interactions with her professors. But at that time, Mills did not have an active research program, so in pursuit of more science endeavors, Carroll found her first lab job through a friend to work at Oregon State University with Prof. Walt Ream.

"It was a remarkable experience. I had my own project and I was in full control of my time," said Carroll. "It was a great opportunity for me to have intellectual freedom."

At OSU Carroll worked on a molecular biology project and learned how to clone a gene. After a full summer, she accomplished her task and even produced a publication.

The following year she studied at Mt. Holyoke in Massachusetts as an inter-college exchange student. Through her lab contacts at OSU, Carroll soon connected with biochemistry professor Lillian Hsu, who had a small research program. Hsu studied bacterial transcription, and Carroll immediately signed up to work there for the year. And over the summer, she entered an undergrad research program at Rockefeller University, where she worked hard and produced another publication.

Carroll was a quick study at making scientific connections, and her contacts were already wide ranging. Upon graduation, she worked as a tech for Prof. Mike Chamberlain at the University of California at Berkeley in the same lab where Dr. Hsu had completed a sabbatical. When she applied to grad school, Stanford was at the top of her list.

When she visited the Stanford biochemistry department and interviewed, it was love at first sight.

"Stanford was just a dream come true," said Carroll. "It's a beautiful place and the biochemistry department is very progressive and scientifically diverse. It reminds me very much of what we have here at LSI which is one of the big attractions for me here."

The Stanford lab was exceptional: 2 Nobel Laureates, a faculty of 10, where DNA had been discovered.

"I didn't appreciate that at the time," Carroll said. "I didn't have a big sense of what a special thing this was, in large part because it was such a collegial and nonhierarchical environment, but gradually it became very clear. We had individuals from very different backgrounds doing different sorts of science, like here at LSI."

Carroll's post doc was spent with Carolyn Bertozzi at UCB, who ran a huge lab of over 50 members making big discoveries, which made a huge impact on Carroll.

In grad school, Carroll had been studying protein transport and cell biology, but wanted to learn a new skill set. She wanted to make molecules and Bertozzi's dynamic lab environment offered encouragement.

"You're not just making a compound for the sake of making it, you're making it for a purpose—to probe fundamental biological processes," Carroll explained.

Having had wonderful mentors from her earliest days continuing with Bertozzi, Carroll also was mentoring many students while allowing her own ideas to take shape.

"

The major part of what we do is train people to be excellent scientists." Carroll said. "And having people working on experiments I thought were really interesting ideas allowed me to explore many different 'what ifs,' because having my own little mini-group was very empowering, and it allowed me to try on academia."

Michigan was Carroll's first job interview following her post-doc.

"I knew the minute that I was here that this was a place that I wanted to be," she said. "In fact I'd met the chair of the chemistry department Prof. Carol Fierke when I was a graduate student at Stanford. She is a wonderful chair and provides great leadership."

Carroll did make a lot of molecules and continues to at LSI in her own lab. Her team follows the philosophy that drove Carroll to embrace biochemistry originally: the ability to make new molecules and use them for a targeted function.