Amanda Solem, PhD.

Yes, RNA Spotlight readers, there really is a place called Kalamazoo – and it’s not only the home of one of the best Breweries (Bell’s) in the USA, the focus of this RNA Spotlight, Dr. Amanda Solem, received her BA in Biology at the small liberal arts college that bears this Michigan’s city’s name.  Amanda then obtained her M. Phil and PhD from Yale while exploring the role of DEAD-box proteins – in particular the Mss116 helicase in yeast mitochondria Group II intron self-splicing under the tutelage of Anna Pyle.  She then ventured back to the only state in the USA that borders four Great Lakes to use a single-molecule approach to study U6 RNA dynamics in assembling spliceosomes with David Rueda.  When David moved to Imperial College (where he is now Chair of Molecular and Cellular Biophysics), Amanda switched her postdoctoral studies to Alain Laederach’ lab at UNC-Chapel Hill, exploring how differentially spliced isoforms of a gene might adopt different structures and how or why they might be made into protein differently.   

Building upon her beloved undergraduate experiences in a small liberal arts college with small class sizes, Amanda’s career goal was to teach at a small college.  When you meet Amanda, its abundantly clear that she enjoys helping people learn new things and she jumped at the opportunity when offered a faculty position at Hastings College - a student-centered institution in the great State of Nebraska (which also, by the way also has a city named Kalamazoo….).  She has risen in the faculty ranks and is an Associate Professor teaching a variety of courses in the area of genetics, biochemistry (her favorite), and molecular biology.  Her current research efforts are very focused – examining alterations in nucleic acid melting temperatures in an ionic liquid synthesized in the Hasting College Chemistry Department.  By the way, if any RNA Society grad students or post docs want to practice a job talk on an undergraduate audience, please contact Amanda about doing a virtual presentation for the Hastings College students!

Based on her teaching experience, Amanda has some excellent advice on novel ways to promote scholarly activity in students who are taking fundamental basic science courses (besides classic experimentation to promote engagement).  While teaching a non-majors science course, the students complained to Amanda that they did not like the exams because they were from disciplines that focused more on papers, projects and presentations.  She responded that exams, of course, could not be eliminated, but she was willing to augment course grading by adding an extra assignment that could be a scholarly paper, presentation or a project of their choice.  The non-science major students were thrilled and actively celebrated their victory – while Amanda was also secretly celebrating a victory since this meant that the students actually agreed to do EXTRA work!  The moral of this story is that if you actively listen to your students, you can actually create a ‘win-win’ situation. 

The art of teaching is constantly evolving.  Amanda has participated in two really exciting NSF initiatives in science teaching – an Active LENS Train-the-Trainers Workshop on Digital Evolution Educational Software as well as  HITS or High-throughput Discovery Science and Inquiry-based Case Studies for Today’s Students.  The first provided training in AVIDA-Ed, a program of in silico evolution – which lets students observe evolution in real time!  Unlike a simulation, the results can be different each time and it can be really really really useful in combatting some common misconceptions about how evolution works.  The HITS experience involved case studies to allow diverse groups of students the ability to analyze large data sets. The bottom line from Amanda:  “It’s been very exciting to meet a whole community that is focused on science education and finding new and innovative ways to foster the next generation of scientists.”

"If any RNA Society grad students or post docs want to practice a job talk on an undergraduate audience, please contact Amanda about doing a virtual presentation for the Hastings College students!"

One fascinating aspect of Amanda’s career is that she is very active in professional development and outreach activities.  She’s the faculty advisor and district director for Beta Beta Beta, the biology honors society.  She supports this group of students in planning and organizing an annual regional meeting.  She’s also extended her educational reach down to middle-schoolers where she co-taught science in several focus areas. These type of outreach learning activities have included some very interesting service learning components – like a Dinosaur Days activity at the local museum where she taught evolution as well as a  ‘DNA days’ activity where she taught about that other nucleic acid that is not quite as cool as RNA.  One can only imagine that an exciting ‘RNA Days’ Initiative must in the works.

At every stage of her career, Amanda has been inspired by a variety of scientists and role models.  After she finished her BA, Amanda worked with Mark Capara at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) on Group I introns.   Mark actively mentored Amanda - from at the very beginning walking her through the details of each day so that she would feel comfortable in the lab to eventually establishing  goals across weeks or months.  In this fashion, Mark modeled for Amanda not only how to do science, but also how to train others.  It was Mark who convinced her that she too could become a researcher.  During her time at CWRU, Amanda also met Eric Westhof and was absolutely fascinated by his ability to visualize RNA structures in his head and predict what might happen – he seemed at least as good as the folding algorithms!  During Graduate School at Yale, Amanda was in many ways in awe of her mentor Anna Pyle.  She was the best scientific writer she’s ever worked for stating: “what I would need months to do she could probably write in an afternoon”.  Dr. Pyle was also bold and took risks – and those risks often paid off, which inspired Amanda to lose some of her innate fears regarding risk.  Her first postdoctoral advisor, David Rueda, was always looking to push harder and inspired Amanda with his drive.  Questions such as – can we get more done?  Can we do something in a new way?  If something might be impossible, can we figure out a way to do it anyway? – were commonly thrown around the lab.   According to Amanda, her second postdoctoral mentor, Alain Laederach, had the widest variety of skills in his lab with both wet and dry lab areas, always looking for new ideas or technology (and Alain is really good at writing grants to fund new ideas!).  She found it truly inspiring to see someone who will always push to learn something new.  Amanda was also impressed with Alain’s ability as an amazing scientific collaborator – being incredibly artful at negotiating interpersonal relationships and keeping collaborative projects moving forward.

In addition to her direct mentors, Amanda has been inspired by several other interactions throughout her career. She particularly loves the RNA Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award speeches.  These speeches have made the giants in the field ‘real people’ as they discuss their backgrounds and paths to success.  As a grad student at Yale, she was also inspired by many faculty – Joan Steitz in particular.  The trailblazing risks that she and other woman like Christine Guthrie in RNA science took are truly inspirational and have made subsequent paths taken by scientists a little easier.       

When asked what was the greatest challenge she encountered in her career, Amanda thoughtfully and honestly thinks it is herself.  She initially wasn’t convinced that she could do ever truly do bench science after making a few mistakes in undergraduate lab courses.  Mark Caprara, her first PI, helped her overcome that roadblock simply by doing some solid mentoring.  Amanda, like many of us, also finds challenges in time management and learning how to self-evaluate effectively.  The bottom line is life and career are an intertwined exercise in adjusting to situations.  You just keep doing the best you can and try to keep a balance of forgiving yourself while trying to improve.

An avid RNA aficionado, Amanda has attended several RNA Society meetings and enjoyed them immensely.  Her favorite RNA meeting story was when she presented a poster as a young grad student. The poster described some experiments about NPH-II initiation – and contained some very nice data that were completely uninteresting and identified several factors that had no impact.  We’ve all been there at one time or another in our research lives, no?  At the meeting, Amanda had several people visit her poster and complement her on how nicely her data looked - and then, with rather concerned expressions, ask if it was her only project.  Luckily for her it was not - but it was nice for her to know her fellow RNA Society Meeting attendees at least appreciated work that would never be published and, most importantly, gave her the feeling that they were looking out for a young graduate student to make sure they didn’t naively get stuck in a dead end project.

Amanda’s favorite RNA is the Aspergillus nidulans mitochondrial COB group I intron. This was the first RNA she worked on and thus was, in her words, her first ‘RNA friend’.  Amanda’s favorite RNA journal article is: Disease-associated mutations in mitochondrial precursor tRNAs affect binding, m1R9 methylation, and tRNA processing by mtRNase P. RNA from 2021. She chose this interesting paper for two reasons.  The first one is personal:  to date, she has only had one undergraduate trainee – Liz Tidwell - go on to graduate school and study RNA.  Liz joined the Koutmos lab who generated this publication (and by the way Liz recently defended – CONGRATS Liz!). Second, this paper simply has some great kinetics work for RNA binding, activity and folding.  These data beautifully showcase how mutations in mitochondrial tRNAs could affect RNAse P function to impact disease.  There’s actually one more reason why she is a fan of this paper.  Amanda remembers being very impressed when Carol Fierke’s grad students told me she could do natural logarithms in her head faster than they could put it in a calculator!

Congratulations Amanda for appearing in the RNA Society Spotlight series.  If you want to connect with Amanda and chat about science, education, managing family-work life balance, or playing the cello in an orchestra, find her on LinkedIn , Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter @DrSolem)