91影库

During the summer of 2022, Horacio Mart铆n Pallar茅s often spent time in the Stowers Institute for Medical Research library, playing piano and making new friends to unwind after a fruitful day at the bench. Pallar茅s, who recently earned his Ph.D. at the Leloir Institute Foundation in Argentina, considers his three months learning ribosome profiling at ’s lab at Stowers to be instrumental in his career progression, and he’s preparing to return as a postdoc in Bazzini’s lab.

Courtesy of Horacio Pallares

Horacio Pallares takes a selfie in Times Square while visiting New York City during his PROLAB stint in 2022 at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

Pallar茅s’ first stay at Stowers was made possible by the Promoting Research Opportunities for Latin American Biochemists, or PROLAB program, a joint initiative of the 91影库 and Molecular Biology, the  and the . Over more than a dozen summers, PROLAB has given more than 100 biochemists and molecular biologists travel grants so they could gain exposure to new scientific technologies at collaborators’ labs in the U.S. and Canada.

In 2005, Judith Bond, then the ASBMB’s president, traveled to the PABMB annual meeting in Buenos Aires, where she was impressed by the work presented by students and postdocs.

“The science was of high quality, even though some of these countries are experiencing political unrest and variable economies,” Bond said.

She could foresee many benefits from increased collaboration between North and South American scientists, with researchers in the U.S. looking south for untapped talent.

Joined by their shared vision to foster international collaborations, four former 91影库presidents — Bond, Bettie Sue Masters, Heidi Hamm and Susan Taylor — submitted a proposal to the 91影库Council to provide funding for the program.

Along the way, IUBMB and the PABMB provided additional support, expanding the program to include international students from Spain and Portugal.

The 91影库has continually renewed PROLAB since its inception, based on the excellent feedback the Awards Committee has received from both the trainees and the PIs who take them into their labs.

Host–virus interactions

As a Ph.D. student, Pallar茅s found that the Zika virus counteracts the host cell's antiviral response by modulating the translation of antiviral genes. To verify this observation, he needed to use a high-throughput approach such as ribosome profiling, which measures gene expression at the transcriptome level.

“I wanted to do ribosome profiling, and not many laboratories do that kind of science here in Argentina,” Pallar茅s said. “Actually, there are none.”

He heard about PROLAB from Diego Alvarez, a professor at the University of San Martin who had sent students from his lab to the U.S. with the program.

“I got very excited,” Pallar茅s said.

Ariel Bazzini, an expert in gene expression, especially in RNA stability and translation, and a pioneer in adapting ribosome profiling in a whole zebrafish embryo, was a perfect fit for what Pallar茅s was looking for.

Pallar茅s applied the technology to answer critical questions for his thesis project; his findings will soon be published in a leading scientific journal. He also brought his new skills back to Argentina, where he mentored peers and started performing ribosome profiling.

“Sometimes, we don’t realize that one Ph.D. student goes to another lab and learns something, and when he goes back, he can teach that to the entire community,” Bazzini said.

A perfect match

Bazzini, also originally from Argentina, benefited from a year in the U.S. as an undergraduate, and he wants to give others similar experiences.

“PROLAB presents a great opportunity to meet a scientist,” he said. “It’s a way for us to give people who don’t know about the Stowers Institute a chance to work in a different type of  institute for a couple of months, and then they can leave and spread the word of how we work.”

As a postdoc, Pallar茅s wants to continue his work on Zika and see if similar mechanisms of altering the translation of host genes occur in other viruses transmitted by mosquitoes, such as dengue or yellow fever.

“I want to study how the genome of the viruses are translated as well,” he said, “if there are viral small open reading frames that could be translated and impact the host cell.”

He also hopes to learn other techniques, such as mass spectrometry, and eventually return to Argentina and open a laboratory implementing these techniques.

“Horacio brings with him a lot of virology experience,” Bazzini said. “Now, we can now apply molecular tools that we’ve developed in the lab to understand how thousands of genes are regulated during viral infection…. He’s bringing different expertise and problems to the lab’s table and expanding our research direction. We’re very excited.”

A career in reproductive biology

Courtesy of Ferran Barrachina

Ferran Barrachina works in an office overlooking Boston during his 2019 PROLAB summer in ’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospi