The image is like an abstract stained-glass window. Set against a black background, a nexus of fluorescent greens, yellows and blues mushrooms out into purples and deep reds. It’s striking — the beauty of cells when viewed through the lens of mass spectrometry.
“Each color is a different chemical,” explained Elizabeth Neumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, as she showcased the image of a spinal cord. “Here’s the white and gray matter; the fluid around the spinal column; the bone, the bone marrow and the muscle around the spinal column. You can actually see a neuron process through the bone.”
Imaging is imperative to molecular biology. To understand human health and disease, scientists need a molecular window into the processes underlying our biology. What is the biochemistry behind gene transcription and protein translation? How does this then lead to the metabolic activity ensuring bodily functionality?
“If you want to study biology, you have to study the chemistry of each of these components spatially,” Neumann said. “Biology also involves communities of cells that are coordinated with one another, and so looking at cellular neighborhoods and how they’re talking to one another and how they’re physically arranged is also important.”
An analytical chemist, Neumann specializes in instrument and method development. She and her team devote their time to designing and advancing mass spectrometry tools that will allow for high-precision chemical measurements and high-resolution imaging. The research runs the gamut, from studying single organelles to whole-body systems. These range in size from nanometers to millimeters and larger.
Underlying Neumann’s research is a drive to increase equity in medicine and healthcare.
“If we think about Alzheimer’s disease, it affects everyone very differently as far as demographical criteria is concerned,” Neumann said. “Can we develop tools and methods that can be used to help us understand how sex, race and other characteristics on things that are fundamental like neurological development and disease?”
Making medical research more equitable
Neumann initially intended to study pre-medicine when she enrolled at Baylor University. But when she considered her interests and concerns, she found herself frustrated by the lack of advancements in medical care tailored towards women and underrepresented minorities.
“On the clinical level, you can solve the issue for an individual patient,” Neumann said. “But I was trying to think more globally. Can we actually think about these things more broadly? What are the areas in the clinical space that are underserved and how do we highlight those issues experimentally?”
For Neumann, the study of chemistry, specifically the development of its tools, provided an avenue to accomplish this. While studying for a doctoral degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, she specialized in high-throughput single-cell mass spectrometry within brain development. She later specialized in mass spectrometry imaging of the kidney while working as a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University, where she helped develop the timsTOF flex system in conjunction with Bruker Scientific.
“I’ve been training for this my whole life in some regard,” Neumann said. “The technical advancements of this instrument really enable high spatial resolution, high-sensitivity applications.”
Currently, the instrument has a home in Neumann’s lab on the UC Davis campus. In essence, it allows Neumann and her collaborators to measure thousands of different molecular components in a single biological sample at cellular resolutions. Coupled with other analytical tools, the researchers can gain clearer insights into our molecular biology, leading to a better understanding of human health and disease as well as new therapeutic interventions.
A home at UC Davis
Neumann joined the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis as a faculty member in the summer of 2022. What attracted her to the university was its commitment to serving marginalized communities.
“I can’t think of a better place to do research that redefines how we think about clinical research in a place that redefines how we think about education and who should be educated,” Neumann said. “We’re using cutting-edge technology to study extraordinarily complicated things, while we’re training the next generation of scientists.”
That community-based mindset informs how Neumann views her research and legacy. Nothing matters more than the lives we touch.
“Whatever I discover in my life is not going to be as significant as the accumulated efforts of all of my students in their own research,” she said. “These are people’s lives that we’re able to actually impact.”
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