Chapter 11 : The Circuitous Path to Becoming a Physician-Scientist

Abstract:

As interesting as the author’s thesis work on plasmid replication was, the author was especially intrigued by the mechanisms by which pathogens, like Salmonella, Shigella, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, caused disease. The author’s almost-buried primal dream of a medical career began to resurface, and the author began to think that a career in infectious diseases might be a perfect marriage of microbiology and medicine. As part of a training program, the author elected to do research project in the Falkow laboratory, which had moved from Georgetown to the University of Washington in the early 1970s. At that point, recombinant DNA techniques, gene sequencing, cloning, agarose gel electrophoresis, endonuclease restriction enzyme analysis, and Southern hybridization were all being used in the lab. The author’s project was to study the mechanisms of multiple antibiotic resistance of Serratia strains that had been isolated from patients at the veterans administration hospital (VAH). The most exciting discovery of the author’s career resulted from an encounter with a patient for whom the author was asked to consult as an infectious disease physician. It is the dream of every microbiologist and infectious diseases clinician to discover a new disease or a new pathogen, but very few of us have this opportunity.