One Scientist and an Ever-Expanding Mentoring Network
By Vishva Nalamalapu, Office of the Chancellor
Scott Stevison ’24 has long dreamt of doing research. “I like solving problems, and research allows me to do that over and over again,” he says. He didn’t, however, expect to jump into genetics research his first year at WSU Pullman. Nor did he expect to co-publish a paper on how UV radiation damages DNA and causes skin cancer in PNAS, a prestigious scientific journal, by his third year.
Stevison’s experience was made possible by his acceptance into WSU’s Honors College and the Students Targeted toward Advanced Research Studies (STARS) program. STARS students begin research early on and can earn their PhD in as little as seven years after high school (compared to the typical nine plus years). He was also supported by a strong network of mentors — from his lab’s principal investigator, School of Molecular Biosciences Associate Professor John Wyrick, to other students in the lab.
STARS students usually spend time in three labs before they find the one that’s the best fit. For his second lab rotation, one of Stevison’s teaching assistants encouraged him to join the Wyrick Lab, which studies DNA damage and repair and how they affect skin cancer. “I have stayed there ever since,” says Stevison.
DNA is central to the Wyrick Lab’s work. But the sequence of bases that come to mind when most people think of DNA is only part of the story. “DNA is more like a bustling city with all these things coming to read it, interact with it, change it, and modify it,” says Ben Morledge-Hampton, a former graduate student in the Wyrick Lab. Each part affects how DNA is damaged and repaired.
Stevison’s research focuses on one component — transcription factors, which bind to DNA and help it become functional proteins. The body can typically repair DNA damage caused by UV radiation, but transcription factors may block repair where they bind to DNA. Stevison’s research into this will deepen scientists’ understanding of transcription factors and skin cancer mutations.
When Stevison joined the Wyrick Lab, Kaitlynne Bohm, a former graduate student, was working on a project studying two types of DNA damage caused by UV radiation. With his busy course schedule, Stevison couldn’t be in the lab as long as he needed to carry out lengthy procedures. But he could analyze the extensive data that Bohm collected to find patterns in the locations of transcription factors and DNA damage. “I got to be right in the thick of the project,” he says.
Stevison has always enjoyed working with his hands. But he was surprised by how much he liked data analysis. “Now it’s a critical part of what I enjoy doing in the lab and what I want to pursue going forward,” he says.
Morledge-Hampton taught Stevison how to do this data analysis, which involves a lot of computer programming. But his mentorship and that of other lab members didn’t end there. “There were no hard boundaries on what we were willing to help him with,” says Morledge-Hampton. They not only helped him learn the subject matter but inspired a greater interest in it. “I’ve just felt very supported and comfortable and also pushed to grow as a scientist,” says Stevison.
Bohm and Stevison found that some transcription factors have a strong correlation with DNA damage. That project has since led to many others. Now, as a first-year graduate student, Stevison plans to study why some transcription factors correlate with more DNA damage than others.
As he was being mentored, Stevison was also doing mentoring himself — as an undergraduate peer mentor, as a College of Veterinary Medicine promoter, and as an Honors College ambassador. He makes intimidating activities, such as doing research as a first year, less so. And he makes himself relatable. “Mentoring with compassion and friendship first is really, really valuable,” he says.
And so, the mentoring network continues to expand and, with it, scientists’ understanding of the world.