Courtney Busch
Member of Dr. Jocelyne DiRuggiero's Laboratory of Archaeal Genomics
PhD Candidate, Molecular and Cell BIology Program
From: born in southern Illinois, raised in Newark, Delaware
Education: B.S. in Biology and B.S. in Anthropology, Washington College, 2003
Interesting Fact: Teaches an ESL (english as a second language) class in Silver Spring, MD.

As an undergraduate, Courtney Busch majored in both biology and anthropology at Washington College on Maryland’s eastern shore.  But her father’s stories about his job at a biotechnology firm influenced her to pursue biology for graduate school.  Wanting to stay relatively close to her home in Newark, Delaware, she applied to several PhD programs in the DELMARVA region. 

Exploring and Choosing a Research Focus at UM

Courtney chose to attend the University of Maryland because of the opportunity to test out a variety of labs and topics.  “I liked the fact that my program, and other programs in the College of Chemical and Life Sciences, let you do lab rotations so you don’t have to come in knowing exactly what you want to work on…at the other schools that I applied to, you pretty much had to go into the lab you got accepted into. ” 

Courtney knew that she was interested in DNA repair in prokaryotic systems and decided to do her dissertation work in Dr. Jocelyne DiRuggiero’s laboratory on Archaeal Genomics.

A Simplified Model System for Multi-Cellular Organisms

Cellular life forms are divided into three domains: Bacteria, Eukaryotes, and Archaea.  Bacteria include organisms like include E. coli and Salmonella, while Eukaryotes include multi-cellular organisms like fish, mammals and humans. 

Courtney’s research focuses on DNA mismatch repair in the third group, the Archaea.  Archaea are unique because they share many characteristics of both Bacteria and Eukaryotes.  “They basically look like bacteria, they’re small and single-celled…but all of their repair processes and information processing systems are all eukaryotic-like. So we use them as a very simplified model system for eukaryotes,” she says. 

Archaea are often adapted to extreme environmental conditions, like volcanoes and deep-sea hydrothermal vents.  Courtney is working with a halophile, an organism that requires a high saline environment, which was isolated from the Dead Sea.

How Archaea Repair Damaged DNA

DNA repair is the process by which an organism’s body attempts to fix sustained damages.  The pathway that Courtney is studying deals with random mutations.  DNA is replicating constantly to form base protein bonds that line up correctly, but occasionally there is a mix-up and now one or more of those protein pairs no longer match. She explains that, this “mismatch” has to be fixed otherwise it will attenuate down the DNA chain and produce more mutations.  In humans, these mutations can cause cancer. 

Since Archea have a simplified version of the Eukaryotic response system, Courtney can study the repair processes more easily.  In the future, other researchers may be able to use her data to test whether or not these mechanisms are similar to those of larger organisms, e.g. mice.  Courtney’s halophile is grown in an incubator at about 42 degrees Celsius in a media of sodium chloride, potassium and magnesium. 

After the growth of the halophile colony Courtney removes particular proteins from the organisms to see if the mutated pairs are corrected.  After these initial observations Courtney is now focusing on investigating how these mutations are fixed, as well as comparing the frequency of mutation with the removal of different proteins.  Courtney plans to finish her research in the summer of 2008. 

A Future in Biotech

After finishing her PhD, Courtney would like to work in the biotechnology industry.  “I worked for an Ag company and they made test kits for crop toxins in Delaware, during my summers between college…so I wouldn’t mind [working for] a company that has more of an agricultural base,” she says, but with her genetics background, she notes that immunology might be another option.  “I’ll probably just apply and see what strikes my fancy.”

Visit the Graduate Program in Molecular and Cell Biology website.
Visit Dr. Jocelyne DiRuggiero's Archaeal Genomics laboratory website.