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Dr Jean Youatt was interviewed in 2000 for the Australian Academy of Science's '100 Years of Australian Science' project funded by the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. This project is part of the Interviews with Australian scientists program. By viewing the interviews in this series, or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge.
The following summary of Youatt's career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers notes. The extract highlights her interest in the fungus, Allomyces. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.
Jean Youatt was born in 1925 in China, where her parents were missionaries. The family was interned there from 1941-45. At the internment camp she was taught mathematics by one of the other internees, and received a school certificate from Oxford University.
Youatt received a BSc from the University of Melbourne in 1949 and then an MSc. It wasn't possible to do a PhD in Australia at that time so Youatt went to the University of Leeds where she worked on an organism that broke down thiocyanate, an industrial waste produced when gas was made from coal. She received her PhD in 1954.
Youatt moved to Malaya with her husband and worked with a US Army unit that was doing research into new viral diseases. On her return to Australia, she worked at the University of Melbourne on the drug isoniazid (isonicotinic acid hydrazide), which was used to treat tuberculosis.
In 1962, Youatt became a lecturer in chemistry at Monash University, where she continued her work on isoniazid. As well as her research interests and lecturing, she was also involved in developing effective class timetables during a period of rapid university growth.
In 1968, during a study leave in Seattle, she became interested in the fungus, Allomyces. Her interest was primarily in how the chemical environment of the fungus controlled its development. One aspect of her research showed that, in each cell cycle, Allomyces alternated between growth at the apex and growth at the base of the hypha.
Youatt spent 1987 in Aberdeen where she worked on investigations into how fungal hyphae grew. This work led to further research and questions into the effects of some of the chelators that were used in experiments on ion movement.
In 1990 Youatt retired and moved to the Biology Department at Monash, where she continued her research.
Hyphal growth cycles: getting Allomyces to ‘jump through hoops’
So what did you decide to go on to after that?
My study leave was in Seattle. I went there in 1968 to learn a bit about microbial genetics, but ended up doing some chemical work for them instead. One person there was working on Allomyces, a fungus which sounded interesting, and during an International Botany Congress I attended an informal meeting where a young geneticist was very keen to get a team of people working on Allomyces. I decided I could be in that, because it didn’t require anything I wouldn’t have access to in the Chemistry Department, and I liked the idea of a number of us being able to work with this fungus. Fungi were new for me. I had always worked with bacteria, where all you see is a little dot or dash, but these things grew like little trees: they had roots and branches and produced different kinds of fruiting structures. Looking down the microscope, you could actually watch what was happening; you could then take samples away and analyse them to see chemically what was happening. I decided this was the nicest combination of things I could possibly get. On my way back I visited Berkeley and got cultures from Professor Emerson – he had first worked with these organisms and was a very nice, encouraging man – and from Dr Machlis. Then I headed off back to Australia, and started to work with Allomyces.
Was that a good choice of project for someone in the Chemistry Department?
Yes, it was. I had to get extra funding, but I switched at that stage from the National Health and Medical Research Council to the Australian Research Grants Committee, because it wasn’t a medical research subject. This dear little organism is a good one: it doesn’t harm anybody or anything. I did all sorts of things with it, but I became predominantly interested in how its chemical environment controlled its development – and, as some friends at Aberdeen subsequently said, ‘teaching it to jump through hoops’. I knew how to make it do things to order, which was very useful. Some of my results were controversial, though. Just studying various aspects of this organism, I realised that I had moved – almost accidentally, I suppose – into what the biologists know as growth cycles, when a cell goes through a series of changes and then divides. A cell cycle is the time between one nuclear division and the next. The literature said that fungi grew exclusively at the apex but I observed that Allomyces in each cycle alternated between growth at the apex and growth at the base of the hypha. Terry O’Brien, in the Botany Department, who was always very helpful, explained to me how heretical this was and said we would have to be very careful about recording it, to make sure that we established very clearly what was happening. Terry had what we needed for time-lapse photography, and a very bright student turned up who was interested in doing it: Ann Cleary, who had done both botany and chemistry. So it was possible, with the things I knew about managing the organism, for us to make a time-lapse film of these events. I wrote a paper and sent it off.
Mr Bennett, at CSIRO, rang me up and said, ‘One of the overseas referees says not to publish your paper because he doesn’t believe it. But I’m going to publish it, because you’ve got your data there.’ That was nice, but over the next few days I began to think, ‘If this one doesn’t believe it, perhaps I’ve got to go and show a few people or they won’t believe it either.’ That was about 1986. I began to think of somewhere to go, asked for study leave, and went off to Aberdeen the next year.
Focus questions
Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.
Allomyces
fungi
growth cycle
hypha
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