Mollie Woodworth: Neuroscientist

- [Narrator] Funding for "The Secret Life of Scientists" is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

(gentle music) - My lab studies the development of different types of neurons within the mouse brain.

And these nerve cells or neurons, there are thousands of different types of them within the brain.

I study the development of one kind of neuron that sits in the brain and sends information to the spinal cord.

And by learning about the development of these neurons, we are hoping that we can maybe make them in a dish and transplant them to cure people who are suffering from, for example, Lou Gehrig's disease or to cure people who have suffered something like spinal cord injury.

(Mollie laughs) (film reel rolls) (gentle music) So my mother was a cheerleader in high school.

She was the head cheerleader actually.

All through my childhood I had said, "Well, I am not a cheerleader, you were a cheerleader.

I am not a cheerleader."

Let's go Tech, fire it up, fire, fire it up.

And so she's adopted this very I told you so attitude.

The blood will tell.

My grandmother was actually also a cheerleader.

So the clear evidence suggests that this may be a genetic trait.

I have no evidence to suggest that it's not.

F-I-G-H-T fight, Tech fight.

I started cheerleading completely by accident.

One of the seniors who lived on my floor, she said, "Hey Mollie, have you ever thought about being a cheerleader?"

And I said, "No."

And she said, "Maybe would you come with me to tryouts?"

And I was like, "Okay, you know, all right."

So I went with her to tryouts and I loved it.

Tech, let's win, W-I-N. Tech, let's win, W-I-N. (gentle piano music) One cheer that we do in particular, it goes like this, e to the u, du dx, e to the x, dx.

Cosine, secant, tangent, sin, 3.14159, integral, radical, udv, slip 6, slide rule, MIT, go Tech.

The cheerleading squad did this cheer at a cheerleading competition.

And the other cheerleaders looked at us like we were insane.

MIT is hot tonight.

Everybody yell red and white.

I have my jacket that says MIT cheerleading.

I've had people come up to me directly and say where did you get that jacket?

Because I would like to order one.

And I'm like, well, you can't, it's my jacket that I got from being on the MIT cheerleading squad.

And you can tell that's not the response they were expecting.

MIT has cheerleaders, yes, we have sports.

It's a misconception that I've had to dispel many times.

It's certainly a conversation starter.

Secret life, win, secret life, fight, secret life, go.

(calm piano music) When I was in high school, I wrote, you know, in 10 years I'm gonna' be doing my PhD in biology at Stanford University.

And then one of my teachers told me in California they have earthquakes.

I kind of had a problem with that.

So I ended up here in Boston and it's worked out well.

There have been no earthquakes so far.

So I'm a graduate student.

And my thesis lab is working on the development of the cortex in the mouse.

Which is the the part of the brain that is on top and is the seed of all the higher cognitive learning and thinking.

One thing that really gets me jazzed about my work is that essentially we're studying this organ and it's a computer, but it's made out of meat.

There are thousands of different types of cells and we're studying how they develop, and how they're different from each other.

The idea is that if we can produce healthy neurons that then we'd be able to treat, or possibly cure, diseases like Lou Gehrig's disease.

We know that there are certain proteins that are expressed specifically in different types of neurons.

So I took my slice of brain.

We can slice it on a machine, that's sort of like a deli slicer.

And I looked at it under the microscope.

And so I could see that some cells were green and some cells were red.

So, you know, some cells had one protein and some cells had another protein, but none of them had both.

To me that meant that they used to be one protein, but now they've diverged and they do two different functions.

I knew this and no one else in the world, you know, even other members of my lab.

And then I had to go home.

So I'm standing there on the subway car really excited about this experiment.

And I was bouncing up and down.

I mean, I was so excited and I was just thinking about the fact that like, of all the people on a subway car I am the only person who knows what the expression pattern of CTIP two and CTIP one looks like.

And I just thought to myself, I'm just gonna' raise my hand.

And I'll say people "CTIP one is expressed all through layer six of the cortex."

You have to be careful in Boston because you never know.

Maybe somebody from another lab who knows these things is actually on the subway car.

(typewriter keys tapping) It's called Tech, take it to the hoop.

'Cause you get to make a hoop.

It goes Tech, take it to the hoop.

Tech, take it to the hoop.

(typewriter keys tapping) A real pyramid but it's easier to break your arm, making a human pyramid.

(typewriter keys tapping) Eventually what we'd like to do is to direct stem cells in the brain to become functioning neurons that could repair disease or injury.

(typewriter keys tapping) The Bring It On movies are classic.

(upbeat music) We've watched them as a squad.

(typewriter keys tapping) Oh yes.

You put the brain on the little plate and there's a razor blade.

And it actually comes and slices a 50 micron section which is about as thick as like 50 hairs put together.

And you scoop up the section and you put it in a plate.

(typewriter keys tapping) I love mice, a happy mouse, a happy research subject, provides good data.

They live good lives.

(typewriter keys tapping) I sat down and I thought, what is the beverage that has the most caffeine that I'm willing to drink?

Mountain Dew actually has 55 milligrams of caffeine per 12 ounces.

I started drinking it and now I can't drink anything else.

(typewriter keys tapping) I made a scarf with a DNA cable.

And like normal people are like, oh man that's a totally sweet scarf.

But scientists are like, oh my God, that's totally DNA.

You know, it's like the secret handshake.

(typewriter keys tapping) My husband gave me a 3D model of a mouse brain that he had designed.

And I got it wrapped up in a box for my first anniversary.

(typewriter keys tapping) Sis Boom Ba, for sure.

(film reel rolls)