Dissecting a mouse
Over the course of almost fours years, while making TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE, director, Robert Kane Pappas, visited Dr. Lenny Guarente’s lab at MIT several times. During that time, he met and filmed many of the post docs working in Dr. Guarante’s lab. One such researcher was Gizem Donmez, who was recently featured in a New York Times article for her discovery of a potentially promising way to treat Alzheimers disease.
Click here to read the article by Nicholas Wade that appeared in the NY times on July 24, 2010.
Below are Pappas’ reflections on meeting Gizem, at the time, a new recruit in Dr. Guarente’s lab:
“I met Gizem Donmez the second time I visited Dr. Lenny Guarente’s Lab at MIT. The young scientists (recent Ph.D’s known as post docs) eat their “to go” lunches around a 12 foot square table in a conference room, with a coffee maker, refrigerator against one wall, and a blackboard decorated with random molecular notations stretching the length of the opposite one.
I was filming their comings and goings. Gizem had only been at the lab for a couple of months, a lovely looking young woman with dark hair.
Though educated in Turkey, she spoke better English than I do. Her mother wanted her to be a doctor, an MD. “Why didn’t you become a doctor, the pay is better” she mimicked. Young post docs are much more upfront than older researchers; Sergie from Ukraine would throw out some barbed comment.
Gizem was studying Alzheimers in mice. We were talking about their humane treatment – I had not gotten the lab to allow me to film where the mice are kept, such was the care taken so they would not be accidentally contaminated. In the midst of this Gizem blurts out “I mean …I kill them” - explaining how they are bred and altered to get Alzheimers. Young Post Docs are not politically correct. Later, on another day, there she was, in lab coat and mask in a partially enclosed germ free area, precisely dissecting a mouse. tiny probes connected to it’s body. You see her in the film doing this.
A couple of months ago, I was up talking again to Lenny about his newest research and ran into Gizem. Her hair in new style — a slight wave — the same sweet expression. She had now been at MIT for 3 years and her work with mice had literally just been published that day in Cell.
I was just finishing my film. I told her she made the cut. Later, Lenny called her “one of [his] superstars”.”
Robert Kane Pappas
July 29, 2010
