Even as a child, Dr. Barry Ganetzky had a relentless curiosity that was rarely satisfied by standard answers provided by parents or teachers. Ultimately, he learned that it was through science—asking questions, doing experiments to test ideas, rejecting those that could not be supported by rigorous evidence—that we were able to gain understanding of our world and life in particular, and this fascination with life led to an undergraduate degree in biology, during which he fell in love with Genetics—a love that has not diminished for over 45 years.

Pursuing biological research with a Ph.D. in Genetics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Dr. Ganetzky became deeply involved in the art of Drosophila genetics. Here, he learned how to take advantage of all the useful features of this organism, to conduct breeding experiments and the variety of ways we could manipulate the genes and chromosomes of Drosophila to find answers to fundamental biological questions. Beyond his particular thesis project, he was in an environment surrounded by outstanding geneticists working on a variety of organisms, using genetic approaches to unravel a host of important biological problems.

He continued to strengthen his expertise in Drosophila genetics, eventually becoming the first to identify mutations affecting ion channels. These and other discoveries have had a significant impact on understanding basic neurobiological mechanisms, human disease, and the pharmaceutical industry. He has served as the President of the Genetics Society of America  and was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Throughout his career, Dr. Ganetzky came to strongly believe in the importance of basic research as fundamental to understanding and finding cures for human disease.

Dr. David Wassarman thoroughly agrees with Dr. Ganetzky on the importance of basic research; in fact, he became a basic researcher because he finds it extremely rewarding to figure out how biological systems work. “Part of the reward comes from knowing that fundamental knowledge of biological systems will ultimately make possible the development of approaches to cure diseases,” he remarks. He has worked on a variety of research problems through his career. As a graduate student at Yale University, he used molecular approaches to understand how small RNAs regulate gene expression in human cells. Then, as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, he used genetic approaches in Drosophila to investigate the workings of the cancer-causing gene Ras.

These studies led Dr. Wassarman to a position as an Investigator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he studied epigenetic processes that regulate gene expression. In 2001, Dr. Wassarman moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he continually draws upon each of his prior experiences to achieve the goal of understanding the complex molecular and cellular events that underlie neurodegenerative diseases. He finds his research on traumatic brain injury (TBI) to be particularly engaging, because so little is known about how mechanical damage to neurons leads to a broad spectrum of physiological defects that arise over time.

Drs. Ganetzky and Wassarman have been colleagues as faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who shared a similar interest in Drosophila and the normal mechanisms that underlie neurodegeneration. In the past 5-7 years, they had been interacting substantially to work on neurodegeneration models in fruit flies, trying to understand what happens in aging flies and what happens in various disease conditions that are genetic in origin. Although they had been working on different neurodegeneration models at the time, an idea came when Dr. Ganetzky was reading about the suicide of one of the football players having suffered the consequences of TBI. This was an environmental cause, not genetic. “How useful will it be if we could develop a TBI model in fruit flies, and how come no one has done that before?” Dr. Ganetzky wondered, and knowing Dr. Wassarman’s scientific rigor, he decided to ask Dr. Wassarman about his thoughts.

Dr. Wassarman’s enthusiasm then provided the strong motivation for Dr. Ganetzky to move beyond contemplation and to carry out an action. “I probably would have spent more time thinking, but David just went ahead and did it -- he got the data and pushed us forward,” Dr. Ganetzky remarks. Combining their fields of expertise that overlap but that aren’t quite the same, Drs. Ganetzky and Wassarman have different perspectives, tools, and techniques to offer. Their complementary qualities indeed create a unique and strong synergy, and the fly model of TBI that the Ganetzky and Wassarman team have developed is the first, and the only model of closed head injuries in the fly. Contemporary leaders with robust professional background, Drs. Ganetzky and Wassarman are pioneering a field that will not only inspire other sectors of research but also help alleviate the burdens of those afflicted.