Rebecca Zhang's notes on Dr. Gaёtan Barbet, a professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of Rutgers University.
Dr. Gaёtan Barbet is an assistant professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Rutgers University and the principal investigator at the Child Health Institute of New Jersey. He attended the University of Paris City from his undergraduate to Ph.D. education. As a Ph.D. student, he worked under a professor who had taken part in the then booming research to identify the calcium channels involved with calcium entry in non-excitable cells¹. Unlike excitable cells, non-excitable cells do not generate action potentials— the change in voltage along the membrane of a cell— which open voltage-sensitive calcium channels, and so this process was less understood in such cells.
Much of Dr. Barbet’s work now revolves around calcium signaling and the innate immune system, the older of the two vertebrate immune systems and first line of defense in the event of pathogenic attacks on the body. He focuses on understanding how calcium is triggered in the recognition of bacteria and applies the techniques he learned in his post-doc years to study immune cells like macrophages and dendritic cells. For example, Dr. Barbet utilizes intravital microscopy to examine biological processes live such as immune cells traveling into different organs in organisms. Additionally, the immune cells Dr. Barbet works with are extremely mechanosensitive; applying the slightest pressure can trigger a calcium signal in vitro, meaning outside the living body or in an artificial environment, and he must therefore control and manipulate several parameters in his experiments. Though it can be frustrating to constantly manage the environment and obtain unexpected results, he enjoys the satisfaction of figuring out why an experiment may have failed and exploring more to further develop his projects. He particularly mentioned studying the movement of microbes and immune cells in the gut and how they contribute to gut homeostasis and pathogenic responses that can lead to chronic inflammation. He is also interested in the pathways involved in chronic inflammation, especially concerning IBD.
Dr. Barbet says he is lucky to have been able to study all aspects of the immune system; he enjoys learning about the body’s methods of recognizing foreign from self, unhealthy from healthy, and pathogenic from benign. He loves all the projects he works on and deeply appreciates the knowledge he gains from them. Not only that, but Dr. Barbet also expressed the importance of cooperating with other researchers. Communication in these projects is key, Dr. Barbet adds, as the ability to work with others and share research promotes better problem-solving. His own works receive the help of many of his colleagues, and he also aims to collaborate with clinicians to obtain human samples for his experiments.
Towards the end of our discussion, Dr. Barbet recalled his first project involving knockout mice. The aim in knockout organisms is to remove a specific gene to eliminate a certain function, and the mice Dr. Barbet was using had the TRPM4 gene removed. For months, his experiments were not yielding results. The project had almost ended in failure until they found a lead, which led them to publish an insightful paper on the migration and maturation of dendritic cells¹. Maintaining a good work ethic and perseverance, Dr. Barbet notes, will yield knowledge.
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