“I love asking
questions,
collaborating
with others
and finding
answers.”
Elizabeth Williams
focus on students
n a study of the popular low-carb Atkins diet, nutri-
tion senior Elizabeth Williams found the diet did
Sarah Rodr iguez
not facilitate weight loss in mice. For her work, she
was awarded the University Co-op Award for Excel-
lence in Health and Social Sciences Research at the
or Sarah Rodriguez, everything changed the sum- 2005 Undergraduate Research Forum.
mer after her sophomore year at The University Williams, an undergraduate researcher in Dr.
of Texas at Austin, when she participated in a Michelle Lane’s lab, randomly separated 100 obese mice
Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in into five different diet groups. The high carbohydrate,
Galveston. “I was a pre-med major and had always high fat and Atkins groups were allowed to eat as many
planned on becoming a doctor, but when I started calories as they wanted.
doing research, it was all over,” Rodriguez says. A group of mice called “peer-fed” were given a high
Along with 30 student researchers like herself, she carb diet, but limited to the same number of calories
spent the summer working 50 hours per week in a lab as the Atkins group. (These mice started their diets a
for the first time. “It was such a great experience and week later, so Williams could match their calorie intake
I learned so much being thrown into a new situation, to that of the Atkin’s group.) A fifth group of “calorie
adapting and accomplishing something worthwhile,” restricted” mice were also fed a high carb diet, but had
she says. “I knew it’s what I wanted to do.” their calorie intake restricted to 70% of the high fat
After returning from her REU, she looked for more group. After monitoring the mice for 14-weeks, she
exciting research opportunities and found one in the mo- says the results were striking.
lecular biology lab of Dr. Brent Iverson and Dr. George Sarah Rodriguez. “The calorie restriction diet was the best by far,” Wil-
Georgiou, who collaborate on antibody engineering. Photo by: Matt Lankes. liams explains. “Without calorie restriction, the mice
“The main story in antibody engineering in the lab following the Atkins diet had the same body fat per-
is anthrax protection—evolving certain antibodies centage as the mice on the high fat diet and they didn’t
to block the entry of the bacteria into a healthy cell,” lose any weight.”
explains Rodriguez. She worked with E. coli cells and
“Research
She is now researching whether diet affects tumor
DNA, manipulating genes and making point mutations growth and was recently awarded an Undergraduate
for the researchers in the lab. Research Fellowship. This November, her earlier colon
Last year, she was one of two students at the univer- showed me cancer research with Lane, an assistant professor of
sity to be named a 2004-05 Beckman Scholar, an honor human ecology, was published in Cancer Research.
that awards scholarships to exceptional students in
a world that
Fascinated by molecular nutrition and neuroendo-
chemistry and the biological sciences. Rodriguez, now crinology, Williams plans to pursue a graduate degree
a biochemistry and chemistry senior, plans to begin in science. “I love research because it’s constantly chal-
graduate school next year and says involvement with I really didn’t lenging,” she says. “I love asking questions, collaborat-
research was crucial to her success as an undergradu- ing with others and finding answers.”– Stephen Schenck
ate. “Research showed me a world that I really didn’t
know existed
✥
know existed before. It showed me what it meant to be Michelle Lane’s website:
a scientist.”– Stephen Schenck ✥ www.utexas.edu/depts/he/ntr/lane.htm
before.”
Antibody engineering:
www.che.utexas.edu/georgiou/home.htm
Undergraduate research: cns.utexas.edu/urp/
f o c u s o n s c i e n c e 15
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