Investigating the Primary Cilium: Q & A With Xuecai Ge

Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Xuecai Ge. The brain is a large and complex organ, but some very small structures guide its development. Xuecai Ge, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced (UC Merced), has devoted her career to understanding one of these structures called the primary cilium. In an interview, Dr. Ge shared how her childhood experience inspired her to study science and what makes the primary cilium fascinating. Q: How did you first become interested in science? A: When I was a little kid, my mom was a primary care doctor, and I saw her treat patients in our community. I noticed that no matter who got a particular illness, she could use the same medicine to treat them. My little mind was amazed that the same medicine could work for so many different people! I think this early experience planted the original seed of my interest in life science. Q: What was your path to becoming a researcher? A: I majored in pharmaceutics as an undergraduate student at Peking University Health Science Center in Beijing, China, but found it more interesting to study the biology of the human body than medicine itself. So, after earning my bachelor’s degree, I entered the graduate program at Tsinghua University in China. During that period, I studied learning and memory using the fruit fly as a research organism and quickly became enthralled by neuroscience. I went on to enter a neuroscience program at Harvard ...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Being a Scientist Cells Cellular Processes Profiles Source Type: blogs