H E B E.  M.  G U A R D I O L A - D I A Z.

The following feature article appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in December, 1999.

DISCOVERING BIOCHEMISTRY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

AZT, or azidovudine, is regarded as one of the most effective weapons against AIDS. But to Assistant Professor of Biology Hebe M. Guardiola-Diaz, the antiviral drug is equally valuable for its ability to illustrate biochemistry in a very compelling way.

"When we’re talking about enzymatic activity, I show students the molecular structure of AZT and explain that by inhibiting enzymatic activity AZT is able, at some level, to help AIDS patients," she explains. "Enzyme kinetics can be very cut-and-dry and very mathematical. Or, you can provide reasons why students should care about the understanding of molecular structure."

Guardiola-Diaz teaches biochemistry and neurobiology in the biology department and in the neuroscience program. A Trinity faculty member for a year, she already has earned a reputation as a passionate and challenging teacher. It is a passion that she believes everyone should embrace. "How can you not care about life?" she asks. "We’ve all had headaches. We’ve all had the fear of getting an incurable disease. We all care about genetic diseases, especially young people who are thinking about starting families. How can you understand mental illness without understanding the biochemistry of the nervous system?"

Rooted in science
A native of Puerto Rico, Guardiola-Diaz’s interest in science and medicine is one that she shares with many other family members. She earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico, then spent a summer doing research at the gerontology division of the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (INSERM) in Paris. She earned her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Michigan, before doing a post-doctoral fellowship in the biochemistry of nuclear receptors at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden’s leading institution for medical education and research. Before coming to Trinity, she served as an instructor in biology at the University of Michigan. In her research, she is currently examining a family of proteins that reside in the nucleus of cells in the nervous system and that, when activated, control gene expression. An article based on related research into how cold affects an organism’s production of fat cells was recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Says Professor of Psychology Priscilla Kehoe, who directs Trinity’s neuroscience program, "Dr. Guardiola-Diaz is an excellent teacher with serious concern for her students’ welfare and their advancement in scientific thinking. Her scholarly research adds another level of analysis to our diverse program. In the "Neuroscience Methods" course, her students have had the opportunity to examine cells of the nervous system called ‘oligodendrocytes’ that cover certain neurons and are the very cells that, when missing, cause diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. The students were able to learn to utilize techniques that allow the growth of these cells in order to study their maturation. For Trinity students this is a unique opportunity to learn modern molecular neurobiological techniques as well as participate in cutting-edge research."

Last summer, Guardiola-Diaz and Professor of Chemistry David E. Henderson conducted an innovative phytoremediation project in which students created an experimental garden in a lead-contaminated vacant lot in Hartford. Their goal was to remove the toxins from the soil and reclaim the area for the neighborhood residents. Says Charles A. Dana Professor of Biology and department chair Craig W. Schneider, "Hebe’s full of new ideas and a bundle of energy."

Problem-based learning
Guardiola-Diaz tries to make her students care about what they’re learning by making science relevant to them. Employing "problem-based learning" in her classes, she presents students with problems that relate to real-life situations. In a recent class, students considered the case of an unemployed man who was admitted to the emergency room in a coma, with alcohol on his breath. Students were given the results of a blood sample analysis -- including alcohol, blood glucose, lactate, and pH levels -- and told that after hemodialysis was started, the man’s blood alcohol level fell, he regained consciousness, and he was released from the hospital two days later. The students were challenged to explain, based on the clinical evidence, what had actually happened to the man.

Neuroscience major Julie A. Plagenhoef ’00, who is currently taking biochemistry with Guardiola-Diaz, says her professor’s approach is very effective. "One of the things that’s difficult to do in the hard sciences is to relate what you’re learning to the outside world," Plagenhoef notes. "But Professor Guardiola-Diaz gives us practice problems that could happen in our own lives." Since her junior year, Plagenhoef has worked as a research assistant to Guardiola-Diaz. She believes the experience will help advance her plans to attend graduate school and earn a degree in public health.

Says Isaac Bohannon ’00, a biology major who’s taken biochemistry with Guardiola-Diaz, "Professor Guardiola-Diaz wants students to think for themselves. In biochemistry lab, we designed our own experiments using the scientific literature and techniques we learned at the beginning of the semester. Doing experiments that way took longer than if we had all the steps outlined for us, but I got so much more out of it."

Guardiola-Diaz hopes that her students will come to share her enthusiasm for her subject. "Biochemistry is the study of the molecules that do the wonderful things that we define as life," says Guardiola-Diaz. "It’s very intellectually satisfying and a lot of fun to engage my students as they make this discovery."

                                                                                                                                           Suzanne Zack