this is global health

The Outside View
you are what you eat. We all know this is true, but why
it’s true is another matter—especially when it comes
to links between obesity and cancer.
enter kate laws (left) and alissa armstrong.
“basically,” says laws, “we study the ways that
what you ingest changes [how] your body functions—
in a really tiny snapshot.”
that “snapshot” is the Drosophila fly. both women
are tracing nutrient-sensing pathways that lead
through fat tissue to ovarian stem cells, ultimately
impacting how many eggs the flies produce. the pair
hopes to shed light on how diet affects stem cells in
general, across a wide range of organisms and—since
normal stem cells and cancer cells share many of the
same pathways—on the cancer-fat connection in
particular.
When work on their lab is complete, armstrong
and laws look forward to sharing space with another
reproductive biology lab. having peers with an
“outside view” nearby will be great, says armstrong.
“they’ll [bring] in new ideas about what you might be
looking at and what your data might be telling you.”
kate laWs
4th-year phD student, bMb
alissa arMstrong, phD
postdoc, bMb
pi: Daniela Drummond-barbosa, phD
A Special
Space
The Bacteria Stops Here
For over a decade, karen griffin has been working in
the glassware lab, helping to ensure that every test
tube, pipette and beaker in MMi gets cleaned and
sterilized properly.
griffin’s work begins when a researcher drops
off a cart of dirty equipment, usually containing
about 20 pieces of glassware. “sometimes we have
20 carts,” she says. “now we can do all 20 in eight
hours.” With roughly 800–1,000 pieces coming in
every week, griffin and her coworkers need to clean
approximately 47,000 pieces every year.
thanks to the renovation, griffin’s workspace
is literally twice as efficient as before. she and
her coworkers now have two glass washers, two
autoclaves to sterilize equipment, two dry ovens and
(thankfully) twice as much space.
griffin has been around long enough—13 years—
to fully appreciate such equipment. “in the old days,”
she says with a laugh, “we had to use our hands.”
karen griFFin
laboratory assistant, MMi
glassware lab
Johns hopkins public health / spring 2013 33