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As published in UConn Health Center Magazine, Summer 2006.

Exploring Life

By Patrick Keefe

Brenton Graveley studies planarians to try to identify genes that control the regeneration process.

Brenton Graveley, Ph.D., believes he may have the perfect job. “Basically, I try to figure out how life works,” says Graveley, an associate professor of genetics and developmental biology at the Health Center.

“Research is exciting,” he says. “Every day is completely different. Sometimes, you think you know how something works. You do an experiment and learn it’s completely different from what you expected. When that happens, it’s even more exciting.”

He is interested primarily in how genes are “turned on” and “turned off” at different times or in different cell types, and the effect on the development and function of an organism. He investigates the process of alternative splicing, the way in which one gene can give rise to multiple proteins. The process holds important consequences for the development of the organism.

Graveley also studies planarians, tiny worms that can completely regenerate themselves. Cut off a piece and it becomes a new worm. The entire organism is filled with stem cells so the work naturally becomes the study of stem cells. “We’re working to identify the genes that control the regeneration process,” he says.

Graveley came to the Health Center in 1999, the first faculty member hired by Marc Lalande, Ph.D., chairman of the newly created Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology.

A graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Graveley did graduate work at the University of Vermont and post-doctoral work at Harvard.

His seminal moment came when, as a freshman journalism major, a school computer error placed him in a molecular biology class taught by David Prescott, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The class was so intriguing that Graveley was hooked.

“From day one, I fell in love with that class,” he says. “I never knew molecular biology existed; and at the end of that semester, I was doing research in Prescott’s lab. From freshman year, I knew I wanted to be a molecular biology professor,” he adds, “and here I am.”

In addition to research and teaching, Graveley is a member of the Health Center’s research recruitment committee and is excited about his role in shaping the institution’s academic future.

“The goal of our lab is not to cure a specific disease, but to understand how life works,” he says. “That information is absolutely necessary to try to cure human diseases, and it is only discoverable through basic research.”