Students and Professor Unlock Keys to Protein Function In Disease-Causing Bacteria
Traditionally, those who teach science to college undergraduates provide information—both in class and the lab—that is already known. But thanks to a $100,000 grant she received from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, Associate Professor of Chemistry Krystle McLaughlin has been teaching a class and doing research with her students that seek answers to scientific puzzles that break new ground. “I wanted to bring the excitement of real-lab research into the classroom,” McLaughlin said as she discussed her work recently in her office in the Bridge for Laboratory Science. “I like to learn along with my students, to make discoveries together.”
The grant, called the Cottrell Scholar Award, provides funds to members of the science faculty that enable them to develop scientific studies likely to have significant outcomes and a transformative impact on their students and their institutions. McLaughlin used some of the funds from the grant to create a new intensive course that involves doing this groundbreaking research in Vassar’s biochemistry lab.
McLaughlin’s work employs a technique called X-ray crystallography to unlock the keys to protein function in disease-causing bacteria. She said the research could ultimately lead to the development of more effective antibiotics, as many bacterial infections become resistant over time. Her research focuses on the study of proteins from bacteria related to human health, including Salmonella, the cause of many food poisoning cases, and Legionella pneumophila, which causes a rare but severe form of pneumonia.
“We know bacteria become resistant to antibiotics fairly quickly, so studying more of these proteins will lead to new avenues to target them,” she explained. “My students gather data to figure out exactly what these proteins do. This approach, part of a method known as structure-based drug design, enables more precise drug development compared to trial-and-error methods. By publishing an analysis of these proteins, we are making it possible for their use in drug development.”
McLaughlin’s work with the students in this course has led to the publication of three papers in the scientific journal Acta Crystallographica.
One student who contributed to the publication of those papers, Chi Nguyen ’26, said she had convinced McLaughlin to allow her to enroll in the course, even though she lacked all of the prerequisites. “This class was a little out of the norm for me,” Nguyen said. “I was able to be part of a more adventurous and unconventional course beyond the biochemistry requirements. A big chunk of our research was to investigate the functions of structurally solved proteins, including in Legionellia pneumophila.”
Nguyen said she enjoyed “trying and failing so many times,” not only with her fellow students, but also with McLaughlin. “The way she runs her classes enabled us to design our own experiments in a small-class setting, allowing us to work very closely with her and experience the entire pipeline of an academic research project.”
McLaughlin said Vassar’s liberal arts approach to learning made this work possible. “We don’t know what we don’t know in science a lot of the time,” she said, “so the kind of liberal arts thinking that Vassar teaches is critical to my work here.”