The Cell Search

Presidential Scholar Andrew Chung now studies under Wallace

A 1986 graduate from Tech with double degrees in applied biology and electrical engineering, Chung is now a graduate student at Emory University, working under Dr. Douglas Wallace.

He pours over microscopic images, searching for traces of a protein that may be functioning in both the nucleus and mitochondria, helping their respective DNAs work together. He believes the protein is so ancient that it will be found in many living cells, from bacteria to humans. His mentor, Dr. Wallace, named the genetic sequence that the protein recognizes the "oxbox" for its role in oxidative phosphorylation. This is the process by which a cell produces most of its chemical energy in ATP, the energy currency for all life on Earth. The protein that binds to the oxbox is a transcription factor that helps turn on genes whose products catalyze chemical reactions--in this case, reactions involved in providing the cell with ATP.

"I find this genetic sequence all the way down the evolutionary ladder," he says. "The major significance of this protein is that it may be a communication line between the nucleus and the mitochondria."

Chung was attracted to Wallace's laboratory because of its reputation for groundbreaking microbiological research. He's fascinated with how an embryonic cell transforms itself to meet its specialized function, such as extruding its own nucleus to become a red blood cell.

"How does it know to do that?" he asks. "What is happening at the level of gene expression?"

Chung's microbiological searches began when he accepted one of Georgia Tech's first President's Scholarships in 1982. His mind was on Tech even before he was offered the scholarship.

"Georgia Tech is a no-nonsense school. When you go there, you can tell," he says. "Students are very serious about what they're doing."

hung took a double major because he liked biology, but also wanted the strong analytical background electrical engineering provides. He is convinced his training in digital signal processing will help him understand how a cell "knows" how to combine its genetic "tools" to create a vast array of proteins. To him, the subtle interplay among genetic factors to regulate gene expression is like the interplay among electronic digital signals through which a compact disc player turns binary data into music. Borrowing an electrical engineering term, he and his colleagues are essentially constructing a genetic "truth table" to define how the cell works in terms of binary data, allowing researchers to predict what the cell's response will be, given different combinations of active chemical tools.

While at Tech, Chung wrote poetry, co-edited the campus literary magazine, and jogged. After entering Emory's PhD/MD program, he was managing editor of the medical school newsletter until he sacrificed that to meet heavy class and laboratory demands.

For now, he's absorbed with exploring the oxbox element's significance.

"Andrew's studying a very important phenomenon, which is how the nucleus and the mitochondria interact with each other," says Wallace. "The nucleus and the mitochondria are not going to stay together for almost two billion years and get along as well as they have without having any way of coordinating and communicating with each other, so that's a very exciting area of research."

Wallace isn't bothered that Chung's research is quite different from the body of Wallace's anthropological work. In fact, he prefers workers who pursue their own research interests, seeking independently minded graduate students who balance flights of creativity with experimental validation and are thrilled at making original discoveries.

"I like to get people around me who share that excitement," Wallace says.