Welcome to Biomed Bites, a weekly feature that introduces readers to some of Stanford’s most innovative researchers.
John Pringle, PhD, focused most of his career on yeast. Easy to culture in the lab, yeast offer scientists a malleable model to learn about all types of cells, including human cells.
As a professor of genetics, he still does a bit of that. But now, his heart is focused on saving the world's coral reefs - no small task given that these living ecosystems are vulnerable to temperature changes, carbon dioxide concentrations and overfishing.
Pringle's research concentrates on a small sea anemone known as Aiptasia pallida, as he explains in the video above:
We picked an experimental system that has huge advantages over the corals themselves and we try to learn basic things about their molecular and cellular biology that will help us with the more complex and less experimentally tractable system of the reefs.
Just as with his yeast work, the lessons learned from the anemones are directly applicable to human well-being. "Corals are important to hundreds of millions of people around the world for livelihood and for the beauty they bring and the food they provide," he says. "We have the hopes that by doing basic research, we’ll contribute to an understanding of how coral reefs might be preserved."
Learn more about Stanford Medicine’s Biomedical Innovation Initiative and about other faculty leaders who are driving biomedical innovation here.
Previously: Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble — yeast dynasties give up their secrets, Yeast advance understanding of Parkinson's disease, says Stanford study and My funny Valentine — or, how a tiny fish will change the world of aging research
