Questions and AnswersProf. Dr. Brett Finlay

How or why did you become involved in infection research, what fascinates you about this subject?
Both my parents were research biologists: my father an ornithologist and my mother a botanist.  Hence I was always exposed to research in the biological world.  However, during undergraduate studies I had the opportunity to work in Dr. Paranchych’s lab at the University of Alberta where he was studying bacterial conjugation and bacterial pili.  Although I did my PhD in bacterial conjugation, at the time they were also working on fimbria involved in pathogenic organism adherence, such as Pseudomonas and I was very excited about the aspects of microbiology and infection biology and chose to do a post-doc in this area.

What are you working on at the moment?
Historically, our lab has addressed the molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis of pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella.  It has led us into the field of cellular microbiology where we studied the effects of various bacterial secreted effectors on mammalian cytoskeleton vesicular transport, etc.  A few years ago, we embraced the concept of innate immunology and how pathogens usurped this and more recently we have begun to probe the role of the host microbiota in infections.  By combining the roles of the pathogen, the host, and the microbiota, we feel that this allows us to best address the entire infection process and hopefully understand it and utilize that knowledge to come up with potential therapies and preventatives in the future.

What were the turning points in science, in career, in life that influenced your decisions?
I always knew I wanted to be a scientist although I was not always certain I wanted to be a microbiologist.  Initially I felt I wanted to be a paleontologist and study dinosaurs.  However, being exposed to biochemistry at university, I knew I wanted to study things at the molecular level and through various experiences became focused on infection biology.  There are many turning points in a scientific career, most of them serendipitous.  For example, my choice to work in a biochemistry lab in undergraduate as opposed to a neurobiologist lab was really a matter of convenience.  As well, I had the great fortune of having a wonderful PhD mentor, Bill Paranchych and post-doctoral mentor, Stanley Falkow, who were extremely nurturing and served as wonderful role models and mentors.

What was a single most important moment of your career?
Our laboratory has made many fascinating discoveries in the field of microbial pathogenesis.  Some of the major ones include the use of polarized epithelial cells to study the infection process, which is an area I developed during my post-doctoral studies.  

What was your most important scientific discovery?
Probably our single most important finding was the discovery of Tir, a pathogenic E. coli molecule that is inserted into host membranes, where it then serves as a receptor for the bacterium.  This was an unprecedented finding and really was a pivotal discovery in the world of bacterial receptors and bacterial adherence.

What drives you and carries you on? What do you love about your work?
Science is a funny thing.  You try and try and try to attempt to get an experiment to work and then when the experiment does succeed you then drop it and move on, unlike pretty much every other endeavour in the working world.  Thus much of your time is spent with things that don’t work and despite the large volume of published literature out there, most experiments do not succeed.  However when they do, when you have been working at a project for a long time and then suddenly it works and you become the first person in the world to know that certain aspect, you are just exploding to tell the world about this new finding.  It is that joy of being a scientist and making these discoveries that much like an explorer, being the first to do something, gives on great pleasure.

Idols?
Bill Paranchych, my PhD supervisor
Stanley Falkow, my post-doctoral supervisor
Bill Nye for disseminating science and making it interesting for young students

What would you recommend to someone starting out in science? What would be your advice for young scientists?
Science is advancing so rapidly now that predicting careers in science is very difficult. That being said, it is also an extremely exciting time to be in science.  In terms of recommendations, it would be to get into research labs as soon as you can and gain valuable research experience, ideally while at an undergraduate level at a university. The science one learns in classrooms is very different than the science one encounters in the research lab and the sooner you encounter that and determine whether or not you like research, will certainly allow to you to shape your career.

What would have been your alternative plan (plan B) if science /your job had not worked out?
I have had a long-standing interest in music and would probably have been a professional musician.  However at the time when trying to choose science or music, I realized that in music you had to be the absolute best, while in science you just had to be good. Therefore I chose science which seemed to be a bit more forgiving in terms of a career path. In retrospect, I still play a lot of music and am able to enjoy both science and music, which makes it doubly rewarding.

What are your dreams for the future?
To eradicate specific diseases based on knowledge that we have developed in our lab.  Our E. coli O157 cow vaccine works extremely well and hopefully in the near future when sufficient numbers of cattle are vaccinated, this organism will be a footnote in the historical context of infectious diseases.

What do you think is important and should be worked on in the future?
Our current interests are rapidly spilling into the role of the normal flora and microbiota in infectious diseases as we feel this is a very understudied area.  As well, unfortunately we still tend to study things in isolation in cell culture, etc.  Only by studying the entire infection process in ideally relevant animal models where one has all the different cell types interacting and all the different parameters and combinations that occur during the infectious process can one hope to get a better understanding of the infection process. With the tools and technologies available today, this represents a fantastic opportunity to really make additional inroads into our comprehension and ability to prevent and treat infectious diseases.

What do you do when you are not working?
I try and adopt a work hard and play hard philosophy.  A lot of time when science doesn’t work, one must have outside interests.  Therefore, I play jazz, I sea kayak up and down the westcoast of Canada and I try and stay in shape by running, etc.  I have many outside interests which complement my scientific interests thereby enabling a much fuller life.

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