BTI-NAIST Exchange Marks 15 Years

BTI-NAIST Exchange Marks 15 Years

Tim Montgomery

Following a visit to Minnesota by three Japanese graduate students from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), a group of four Minnesota graduate students from the BioTechnology Institute (BTI) visited Japan in mid-October. Chris Flynn, Grayson Wawrzyn, Jessica Eichmiller and Maria Rebolleda-Gomez were graciously hosted by their NAIST counterparts on a 3-week trip that completed the 15th exchange in a program organized by former BTI Director, Ken Valentas in 1996.

The 15th BTI-NAIST exchange featured a symposium on progress in microbial biotechnology, enzyme engineering and systems biology – and a five-year renewal of the agreement that created the program.

Since its conception, the exchange has successfully connected graduate students from one institution to research groups in the other based on common interests with the intent of learning new skills and techniques. Students from the host laboratory also become cultural mentors for the visitors. Lasting professional and personal bonds are forged in the process, sometimes resulting in collaborative research initiatives.

“I think that my favorite part of Japan,” commented Grayson Wawrzyn, “was learning to be part of a culture so strikingly different from our own.”

Wawrzyn, a graduate student researcher in the lab of Claudia Schmidt-Dannert, was assigned to Takashi Hashimoto’s laboratory and worked with one of his students to help characterize some of the enzymes involved in nicotine biosynthesis in tobacco plants.

Other members of the BTI group participated in equally compelling genomic research projects. Eichmiller studied novel intracellular proline transporters and tested the stress tolerance of mutant yeast strains in the lab of Hiroshi Takagi. Rebolleda-Gomez was introduced to systems biology in the study of bacterial genomics while in the lab of Hirotada Mori. And Flynn learned how cells repair damaged DNA while in the Maki lab.

For Japanese lab members who are required to present their lab work in English each week, working with the exchange group from BTI was an opportunity to practice speaking scientific English.

Living and working together, lab groups also had fun together. Several of the Japanese labs had their own baseball teams, and the last week of the exchange featured ‘lab Olympics day’ where Japanese lab members dressed in super hero outfits competed for fun in a series of relay races.

In addition to experiencing traditional Japanese foods like sushi and okinomiyaki, BTI exchange members also experienced the cultural environment in trips to local shrines around Nara and the old hilltop estates in Arishiyama near Kyoto. The highlight of their cultural experience was a 4-day holiday break that brought most of the group to Tokyo before members went their separate ways. Wawrzyn and Rebolleda-Gomez explored Tokyo further while Eichmiller visited a Japanese friend and Flynn and his wife toured a world heritage shrine and marveled at the beauty of the ponds and cascading waterfalls of Chuzenji in Nikko.

“The hospitality of our hosts was superb,” concluded Flynn. “Everyone was super friendly.”

Added Eichmiller, “an unexpected benefit of the trip to Japan is that I can better relate to my Japanese colleagues at the University.”

A Rewarding Experience in Japan

A Rewarding Experience in Japan

by Tim Montgomery

Janice Frias, Katherine Volzing, Chad Satori and Josh Ochocki visited Japan this past November as part of the BioTechnology Institute’s ongoing exchange program with the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). They travelled to Japan with returning exchange students from NAIST whom they had previously hosted at BTI.

Exciting cultural experiences complemented the students’ lab work at NAIST, beginning with an informal welcome party where dried squid “candy” was served. The BTI group stayed on-campus in guest houses, were chaperoned to various tourist and cultural attractions and experienced new food and pastimes – from a hearty noodle meal of hiroshimayaki to a traditional foot bath where fish nibbled the dirt particles off their toes.

Katherine Volzing visited the ginza, a high style shopping district in Tokyo, and was invited to breakfast with a family in the Tsukiji Fish Market where they served her raw tuna on a stick.

“It looked yucky,” she confessed, “but it was the best thing I ever ate.”

Cultural excursions included time spent at the Todai-ji Temple in Nara; the Kiyomizu Temple, Sanjeusangen-do Temple Garden and Ginkaku-ji Gardens in Kyoto; the Floating Torii at Miyajima; Himeji Castle, and aboard the 200 mph Shinkansen or “bullet train” while in transit. But the exchange group from BTI also accomplished quite a bit in their lab work.

“Professor Takagi said we were the best working group ever,” exclaimed Chad Satori proudly. Satori was excited to work with cell transfections and binding assays in the Sato lab in a change of pace from his mostly analytical work under Edgar Arriaga at BTI.

Janice Frias, who has worked to synthesize biohydrocarbons in the Wackett lab at BTI, was assigned to the lab of NAIST exchange coordinator Hiroshi Takagi, Professor of Cell Biotechnology specializing in applied microbiology and protein engineering. Frias assisted in Takagi’s work with stress tolerance in yeast as an element in improving industrial fermentation in the production of bioethanol.

Frias, Satori and the other members of the exchange group from BTI each found their assignments while at NAIST to be rewarding. Distefano lab member Josh Ochocki was introduced to the work of Professor Kinichi Nakashima exploring neuron stem cells and how they develop into different types of brain cells. And Katherine Volzing found her experience in the lab of Ko Kato examining differentiation in gene expression in stem cells extracted from mice to be a change of pace from her statistical and computational modeling in the Kaznessis lab at BTI. All were impressed with the professionalism as well as the aggressive English requirements of their Japanese counterparts.

“They’re required to put together and present their lab work and plate results in English each week,” explained Janice Frias in amazement.

“The labs were impeccably clean,” concluded Chad Satori. “And everyone was very professional and kind.”