Like many other scientists, Jami Dantzker traces her interest in science back to childhood. She was eight years old when her family moved to the outskirts of Paris, Texas. There she began wandering the 100 acres of pasture and forest adjacent to her home.

"Growing up, I would conduct experiments on my own," Dantzker recalls. "I would use my mother's nail polish to paint letters on box turtles' shells and keep track of when and where I could find them." Dantzker's natural talent for scientific research, however, was neither recognized nor encouraged.

"I was raised by a single mom in a low-income, low-education environment and I didn't have a mentor who noticed my interests in biology. In general, my teachers were very discouraging. I even remember a high school counselor urging me to take half days away from school so that I could train to be a secretary."

Now Dantzker is an up-and-coming neuroscientist and the recipient of a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship in the laboratory of Cori Bargmann. Professor Bargmann is vice chair of anatomy at UCSF and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Work by Bargmann and her colleagues using the round worm, C. elegans, has gone a long way to reveal the complicated relationship between genes, brain cells and behavior.

The Bargmann lab has used genetics, molecular biology and behavioral assays to show how the sense of smell works in the worm. Dantzker strives to bring advanced imaging techniques to bear on the lab's studies. Bargmann says: "You wait for technology to get sophisticated enough. Then you need the right person to pull it all together."

Dantzker is that person, Bargmann says, and the technology is fluorescence microscopy. It will allow Dantzker to watch the behavior of neurons while a worm is sensing odors in its environment. "I think her work could really revolutionize the way we do things in the lab and help break through a barrier in the field."

The Bargmann lab is among those moving to the UCSF Mission Bay campus. As a new postdoc, Dantzker says she hopes the move will mean more interactions between labs. "It has been very difficult for me to meet anyone. You really have to go out of your way." Though some journal clubs and social hours exist, Dantzker says finding out about them can be a challenge.

Bargmann agrees. "The hardest thing about being a postdoc is there's no support system. It's very easy to get isolated. At the new campus, we can create more of an environment where they are more likely to interact."

Bargmann herself moved in the middle of graduate school from MIT to the Whitehead Institute. She says those involved in the creation of such an entity are bound to share a unique bond. "There definitely came to be a Whitehead spirit among the people that moved there when it was started."

Both Dantzker and Bargmann say they have enjoyed their neighbors and the view from their Parnassus Heights laboratory. They do, however, look forward to being housed next door to other labs working on various aspects of neuroscience, including genetics, development and behavior. These labs will share core facilities with new, high-quality and well-organized equipment.

Thanks to a summer job at the Rocky Mountain National Park, Dantzker eventually earned an undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Texas at Austin. "I realized that science was where my passion had always been."

She came to UCSF in October from the University of California, San Diego. She worked with Edward Callaway at the Salk Institute, where she studied the organization of neuronal circuits in the visual cortex of the brain. Using rats as a model system, she teased apart the intricate connections between the excitary and inhibitory neurons.

"Gaining specific knowledge about how a complicated network of neurons communicates is critical to understanding the means by which brain structure contributes to brain function, such as our ability to see," Dantzker says.

Her PhD work demonstrates that neurons differentially influence the transmission of information. For example, neurons that either send signals or inhibit signals also get their information from different sources. "You can think of it like a gossip session in the break room at work," she explains. "Some people want to talk a lot, others try to keep people quiet, but everyone has a somewhat different version of the same story."

During her graduate studies, she became interested in how connections in the brain translated into behavior. However, studying this in a mammalian system can be prohibitively overwhelming, since millions of neurons are involved. Dantzker therefore decided to change her focus from mammals to roundworms. These worms have only 302 neurons in a relatively simple nervous system. Using advanced imaging techniques, Dantzker intends to look at how genetic changes in behavior translate into changes at the level of neurons or networks of neurons.

"We want to know what's happening in the neurons. Is it a change in the signaling in an individual neuron or is it in the way networks communicate?" Dantzker will be looking at the four neurons responsible for sensing odors in the air that attract the worm. She plans to use a fluorescent marker that will glow at intensities proportional to how much individual neurons respond while the animal is sensing odors in its environment.

Between her previous and current research, Dantzker's work has spanned the range of neuro-biology. Bargmann says that is one of her biggest strengths. "Some of the best work in science happens when you bring new ideas into a field," she explains. "Jami adds something interdisciplinary to the lab that makes it a better place and a better learning environment and a more challenging place to be."

For her part, Dantzker says she doesn't have to look far for inspiration and encouragement. "Cori's brilliant," she says. "I hope to run my own lab at a university someday. And I find it helpful to see women succeed in academia."