Pascale Guiton

Pascale Guiton is a microbiologist and assistant professor at Santa Clara University, where she focuses on both teaching and research. She specializes in parasitology, particularly the study of Toxoplasma gondii. She is the founder and namesake for Guiton Lab, a student laboratory at Santa Clara University that studies Toxoplasma gondii in "a safe and collaborative environment". Quotes Cultivating Curiosity in Science ‎Guiton says in a podcast interview for Black in Science with Jasmin Giles There are many aspects of T. gondii biology we know very little about. Our lab aims to uncover novel differentiation and virulence determinants, especially in the gastrointestinal tract, and understand the molecular regulation of gene expression during developmental differentiation. There are a lot of people who are sick in the Ivory Coast. t that time, I thought, okay, medicine is something that I could do to help people. Feeling helpless wasn’t too fun. That was my journey into my interest in science. As an immigrant and a Black woman in science, I understand the challenges that students and faculty from historically excluded and underprivileged communities encounter at institutions of higher education. I am excited to join the faculty at SCU and look forward to engaging with colleagues and students from all backgrounds in a supportive. I can share my passion for microbiology, introduce students to the rigor and the thrill of scientific research, discovery, and innovation. Opportunities for students to connect with science in a way that enriches their day-to-day lives and contributes to making them fully informed citizens. I am excited to join the faculty at SCU and look forward to engaging with colleagues and students from all backgrounds in a supportive and collaborative environment where I can share my passion for microbiology. Introduce students to the rigor and the thrill of scientific research, discovery, and innovation, and provide opportunities for students to connect with science in a way that enriches their day-to-day lives and contributes to making them fully informed citizens. Women and young scientists in academia were hardest hit by COVID-19 disruptions ‎COVID-19 hit women and early-career academics hardest If the university would hire lecturers to provide relief from teaching loads. Tenure track faculty could get back into research labs and make up for work and time lost to the pandemic. The impact of the pandemic on faculty workload, especially faculty with children, was not explicitly addressed by Cal State, and the amount of extra work faculty did was not fully appreciated. What they demonstrated to us is that they will continue to operate, whether individual faculty are there or not. It’s up to faculty to stand up and say, ‘There is no university without the faculty.’ Pascale Guiton: A Cell Scientist to Follow ‎Cell scientist to watch by Pascale Guiton It all started with a plant; when I was in the last year of middle school. I had a biology professor who helped us create a herbarium, and there was this common flower in the Ivory Coast that we passed all the time. Doing the herbarium and having to separate the petals of the flower, the sepal, knowing the names of the different structures. I thought, ‘oh, that's cool; can I know more about these things. Living in the Ivory Coast, we killed our own chickens, and we had to separate the different organs, essentially dissecting the chicken. I remember helping with this and learning about the body while doing so, the tendons and bones, internal organs, etc I had this natural curiosity and wanted to know more. Infectious diseases are one of those things that we live with, and growing up, you had to get vaccinated. It's one of those things that is all around you, even if you don't really think about it. This was until I came to the US for college, and I took several microbiology classes. I found the topic really interesting, how there is a whole other world of microbes that we don't see. Microbiology is also at the intersection of so many different scientific fields. You can do a bit of biochemistry, immunology and even physics. You can do whatever you want as you study microbes. I just think microbes rule the world; even when we become extinct, they'll still be around, and that is very humbling. I also want to mention one person, Dr Zehava Eichenbaum, who really pushed me and inspired me to become a microbiologist. I was an undergraduate, I was looking for a job on campus and saw an advertisement for an undergraduate assistant in the lab. I popped into her office very naively; I had no concept of what an interview was at this stage, and she took a chance on me, probably because I was very enthusiastic and told her I could start in the lab right away. I gained my first proper lab experience, doing bacterial cultures and minipreps to isolate bacterial DNA. At the time, my dad wanted me to be a medical doctor, but Dr Eichenbaum jokingly said that I would waste my brain in medical school and that she would make me a scientist She really believed in me, which I am really grateful for. I would say that the transition was not too bad for me at first. I was quite lucky because when I was a postdoc. I was doing some teaching and working in the lab, back and forth between the two, so I already had experience in balancing research with teaching. The hardest part was doing all the things behind the scenes that you don't know about, all the paperwork. I remember when I first saw my lab space, and that feeling of excitement and dread simultaneously. I had been in labs that were pretty established. I started thinking ‘I'm going to have to pay for all these things’. I did have a startup package, but as East Bay is a teaching institution, it wasn't as high as you would expect compared to research-intensive institutions. I was teaching three courses, one of which I had to develop for 140 students. It was quite daunting; I was also sitting on departmental and college committees, advising student clubs, writing grants, mentoring students in the lab. As I became more established, I had more people in my lab to look after, more students to teach and more grants to write. It is learning to balance these responsibilities that is the biggest challenge, but it's what you need to do to be an effective teacher. The main question of my research program is ‘how does Toxoplasma initiate infection in a new host. Part of that is asking ‘what are the molecular mechanisms that the parasite uses to interact with the gastrointestinal tract. Toxoplasma can infect orally using two forms, the product of sexual reproduction (the oocyst) that eventually sporulate to produce infectious sporozoites. I am focusing on bradyzoites because sporozoites are highly infectious. With bradyzoites, we can look at them in vitro and in mice and they can be easily deactivated. We are tackling this main question from several different angles. By trying to identify novel virulence determinants that are required specifically for that first stage of infection. We want to understand how Toxoplasma goes from a metabolically fast form (tachyzoite, during the acute phase of infection) where it divides rapidly, to a ‘slow’ form (bradyzoite) that divides slowly and is present during chronic infection. During this lifecycle, Toxoplasma also undergoes transcriptional changes. I am also looking at the transcriptional regulation in the parasite and how this affects its metabolism and virulence. I am collaborating with Professor Scott Roy at San Francisco State, an evolutionary biologist, who is interested in alternative splicing, and he is trying to find unique splicing features of Toxoplasma. Another feature of Toxoplasma is the presence of specialized secretory organelles (micronemes, rhoptries and dense granules) found in the apical complex. How proteins are trafficked to these organelles is not known, and is something we also hope to uncover. We have become interested in understanding the interactions of Toxoplasma with mucus. When you ingest Toxoplasma, it has to get through the microbiota, cross the mucous layer, get to the epithelium, cross the epithelium, find its way into the blood. I never really paused and thought about the impact of mucus on that initial infection until I taught immunology. I'm interested in looking at the interaction of Toxoplasma with goblet cells. We just started this project, which I am very excited about. I am not very focused and have lots of questions, but I now have teams of undergraduate students working on each of these questions. Being at an undergraduate institution, I don't see my science as ‘I need to get data. I need to publish’ but more as an extension of my teaching. In a way the techniques we use are a bit more basic and the students need to learn how to perform them. If we need to make some knockout lines, I have to teach them about bacterial growth, aseptic technique, PCR, gel electrophoresis, CRISPR-Cas9. I enjoy that, and it's about reinforcing the students' skills and getting the data is almost a result of the students learning those things. There are obviously risks with this approach, and the progress can be slow well it is slow. I find teaching science and how to do it so rewarding that this is my primary focus. I find teaching science and how to do it so rewarding that this is my primary focus. My approach to effective teaching and learning is akin to manoeuvring a railway handcar whereby both learner and teacher work as partners in an environment conducive to learning. I strongly believe that with the active participation of both individuals. My primary objective is to fully engage my students so that they can acquire these values and skills that transcend degree requirements. They are lifelong proficiencies applicable to other aspects of their lives. I always say if I had to do it all over again, I would be a marine microbiologist. It's fascinating how we or rather I know so little about microorganisms in the oceans or their interactions with sea creatures. External Links Pascale Schaaba Guiton biography ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Category:Living people ‎Category:1955 births ‎ Category:Women academics from Ivory Coast Category:Biologists from Ivory Coast Category:Women scientists from Ivory Coast Category:Women born in the 1950s ‎