Lauren
Kingsley
June 2002
Lab experiences bring home the thrill
of discovery
Lauren Kingsley began her science career
with a bang — her freshman year she was a WISP (Women
in Science Project) intern, a Dartmouth program that places
first-year woman science majors in laboratories with scientist
mentors. Her placement paired her with toxicologist Joshua
Hamilton, director of the Toxic Metals Research Program at
Dartmouth. Last summer she received the Barbara Crute Award,
given to an outstanding WISP intern to continue her work her
sophomore year.
Chemistry is not new to Dartmouth junior
Lauren Kingsley. In fact, both her parents were chemistry
majors who met as lab partners in college. “Science
was always important in my house and my parents encouraged
me to participate in science fairs and take science classes,
but I wouldn't say they directed me into studying science
in college. It's just something that I liked.” Actually,
Lauren, who comes from Hershey, Pennsylvania, began college
planning to be an English major, but then a handful of fantastic
chemistry classes her freshman year changed her mind. Now
she is a star science student — earning awards and doing
research since she began her major. She just became a Presidential
Scholar, which will allow her to do two terms of research
starting this summer and continuing next winter with Dr. Hamilton.
“I really enjoy all the science classes that I've taken
and how what I learn in class and from working in Josh's lab
fits together.”
Lauren’s research is part of a
larger research project studying the long-term effects of
arsenic in drinking water. Her laboratory is looking at the
mechanisms involved in the arsenic-induced diabetes, cancer,
and heart disease. Specifically Lauren is looking at the glucocorticoid
receptor, a hormone receptor protein in the cell membrane
of most cells in the body. Glucocorticoid itself is a hormone
that, among other things, switches on genes that are expressed
to repress cell growth. Lauren’s research team is studying
a phenomenon in which it appears that arsenic acts the same
way as the glucocorticoid hormone — activating the receptor
to initiate growth repression gene expression.
And its implications for humans exposed
to arsenic? If arsenic affects the cell repression aspect
of the glucocorticoid receptor, it may also affect other mechanisms
that the receptor is responsible for and even other aspects
of the cell. Other researchers at Dartmouth have shown that
arsenic can affect DNA repair for example, which can have
implications for cancer. Growth is an easy parameter to measure
in the lab, but there are likely to be other things affected
simultaneously that researchers are not yet looking at. In
fact, some of the research Lauren has been involved in shows
that a mutant cell line that was missing the glucocorticoid
receptor was still adversely affected with the exposure to
both the glucocorticoid hormone and arsenic. This indicates
that there are multiple mechanisms by which arsenic can affect
the cell aside from simply acting as the glucocorticoid hormone.
This summer, Lauren is planning to look at the structure of
the glucocorticoid receptor to understand how arsenic binds
to it and the mechanisms involved in arsenic reaching the
inside of the cell. “I like working in the lab because
I'm doing work that hasn't been done before and you don't
know where the results are going to lead you.”
This fall after her continued work with
Dr. Hamilton, Lauren is taking a leave term and working at
New England Baptist Hospital in Boston through Dartmouth’s
Partners in Community Service Program. “I'd like to
go to graduate or medical school. I'm thinking about applying
to an MD/Ph.D. program and I'm interested in endocrinology
from the little bit I've learned about the field from my research.”
Bethany Fleishman
CEHS intern
