College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Research experience

Professor, undergraduate team up on research project
It's not unusual for Don Sakaguchi, associate professor of zoology and genetics, to have an undergraduate involved with his research lab.

Since his arrival at Iowa State, Sakaguchi estimates more than 40 undergraduates have worked in some capacity in his lab. It's a throwback to his own days as an undergraduate when he sought out such a position.

"During my junior year I started working on a research project in a lab and it was a wonderful experience," he said. "It really helped me determine my future career."

It was such a wonderful experience for Sakaguchi that when he came to Iowa State, he wanted to give undergraduates on campus that same experience.
Sakaguchi prefers that students start working in his lab before they are seniors.

"I've had freshmen work with me, but I prefer to find sophomores and juniors. The potential is there that if they like the work they are doing in the lab they will be with us for a few years," he said.

That's where Todd Hare comes in. While a high school student in Omaha, Neb., Hare worked at a lab at Boys' Town National Research Hospital. When he got to Iowa State, he started looking around for a lab on campus that could utilize his skills.

"I knew that I wanted to be involved in research and Don's lab seemed a perfect fit," he said.

Sakaguchi's lab is looking at the development and regeneration of the visual system. Hare immediately became an important member of the research team and conducted his own undergraduate research.

Last spring that research, "Identification and Characterization of Neural Progenitor Cells in the Brain of Adult Monodelphis domestica," received first place in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research/Scholarship Poster Contest. In his research, Hare identified the regions of the adult brain of the Brazilian opossum, Monodelphis domestica, that contain progenitor cells. He determined that these cells have the ability to differentiate into both neurons and glia.

This fall, Hare is writing a manuscript on his research that Sakaguchi feels will be published in a neuroscience journal.

"Todd will be the first author on this manuscript," he said. "I have had several undergraduates work in my lab, but only a few that are listed on an article as a co-author.

"It's great for an undergraduate to be a co-author, but to actually be the first author on a paper is pretty exceptional."