Newly appointed Fuchs plans to launch research program integrating chemistry and biology

This spring, Tufts welcomes a new faculty member to the Hill. Freshly minted Assistant Professor of Biology Stephen Fuchs hopes to use his background in biochemistry to bring a new perspective to the research and teaching in the biology department.

Having studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Pennsylvania State University, Fuchs said that his in-depth knowledge of chemistry has helped him to see the various biological topics he studies in a different light.

"My background is clearly understanding chemical tools, but using those chemical tools to ask and answer biological questions," Fuchs said. "I think like a chemist, but I understand the biology, and I think that's why I belong here."

After earning his B.A. at Penn State, Fuchs went on to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After that, he held a post-doctoral position at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"What I didn't have when I graduated with my Ph.D. was a real understanding of a biological system and how to use it to answer questions. So I did my post-doc at the University of North Carolina," Fuchs said. "I was there for a little over five years learning to use yeast as a model genetic system to answer questions in biology as well."

Two years ago, Fuchs felt that he was finally ready to begin his own research program, so he applied for positions on the faculties of several different universities. Fuchs said he looked specifically for positions that would allow him to focus his research on the interface between biology and chemistry.

  "But also my research area is in chromatin and histones, which are proteins that are involved in wrapping DNA," Fuchs said, adding that Tufts was one of the few universities he applied to that was looking to hire someone doing research in both of those areas, making it a perfect fit for him.

"I wouldn't say I found Tufts as much as Tufts found me," he said.

According to Associate Professor of Biology Mitch McVey, Fuchs' research fits in very well with the work of other professors in the biology department.

"I know that I am personally looking forward to working with him to bring his techniques and some of the advances that he's made to bear on some of the questions we're concerned with in our lab," McVey said.

Once he gets underway, Fuchs plans to study how different parts of the cell communicate and work together.

"What I'm interested in is how everything interacts in the cell," Fuchs said. Although scientists know a great deal about how different parts of the cell function, he explained, they know much less about how those parts interact with one another.

"It turns out that their interaction is dictated by a number of very small chemical changes, like little tags," Fuchs said. "Certain proteins recognize tags on other proteins and that allows them to interact. I'm interested most generally in how all these things sort of act in a global sense."

According to Fuchs, the knowledge gained from working with these communicative chemical tags in yeast is applicable to other organisms as well.

"We can study something in a very simple organism like yeast and apply it, potentially, to what is going on in a human cell without the need to kill a bunch of animals and do these long, drawn-out studies," he said.

Understanding how those tags work is important, Fuchs said, because human health and development depends on the tags functioning successfully.

"If the tags are mis-regulated it can lead to cancer. If the tags are mis-regulated early on in development it can lead to developmental defects and all these kinds of things," he said.

Associate Professor Juliet Fuhrman, chair of the biology department, explained that Fuchs' research has the potential to positively impact his colleagues' research.

"If we combine [our department's current research] with the expertise of Dr. Fuchs … we have a much greater likelihood of understanding what's going on at the molecular level, and that could have profound implications for diseases like cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, lots of different things that are really important in medicine," Fuhrman said.