On Tuesday night, a crowd of professors, Brunswick community members and Bowdoin students filled Mills Hall to attend Professor of Biology Jack Bateman’s inaugural lecture, titled “An Evening of Weird Science.” Throughout the night, Bateman explained his genetic research without failing to crack jokes and connect with audience members, staying true to his humorous personality.

In his lecture, Bateman emphasized the importance of research that is normally considered “weird” or niche.

“It’s a subjective term. Depending on who you are, you might find different things weird. Many of you may find the grown man spending his time working with fruit flies to be a weird thing,” Bateman said. “I cannot stress enough how game-changing that technology was all coming from this exploratory attitude of just trying to figure out how this weird thing works.”

Bateman gave three examples of innovations that came out of investigating “weird” science: anti-diabetic medicine, Ozempic and CRISPR. An anti-diabetic medicine called exenatide was created after a scientist investigated the spit of gila monsters and found a protein that regulates blood glucose levels. This protein was then modified to be used in Ozempic, another anti-diabetic medication. Similarly, CRISPR—a tool routinely used by scientists today to edit the genomes of living organisms—was originally discovered in bacteria. This gene-editing technology has now been used to treat genetic diseases.

“This has started to enter the biomedical realm. You’re starting to see people approaching diseases with this technology. But in conjunction, there’s this idea we often nowadays call translational research—or applied research,” Bateman said. “It’s sort of taking what’s been discovered over here, in this kind of curiosity, driven into things that are useful for humans so that we can cure diseases.”

Currently, Bateman is researching the question of how homologous chromosomes stick together. He is specifically using flies as model organisms to give insight on how the process works in humans. Scientists currently do not know how the process works, but Bateman said understanding it could lead to a deeper understanding of miscarriages and birth defects.

“It’s a curious thing. Why would they do that? How do they do it right? This is weird. So for whatever reason, my silly little brain is like, ‘I must understand this.’ Is this going to lead to an Ozempic? Who knows?” Bateman said. “We have no idea how this works…. For some reason, I’m like, ‘I’ll be the guy to figure that out.’”

To understand how the chromosomes stick, Bateman starts by breaking down genes.

“I’m a geneticist. We’re probably among the dumbest of scientists. We have a specific way of trying to figure out things. We break things, and then we look to see, ‘Does it work anymore?’ And if it doesn’t work anymore, then we try to figure out what it was that made it work. It seems really dumb, but it’s been effective in the past,” he said.

After multiple trials of breaking down genes, Bateman came up empty handed without an explanation to what makes chromosomes stick together. But instead of admitting defeat, Bateman found two physicists—Hernan Garcia, associate professor of biophysics, genetics, genomics and developmental biology at the University of California, Berkeley and Daniel Jost, associate scientist at Stanford University—who helped him to pursue his research from other perspectives.

“They were, of course, the ones who always come in at the last minute to fix things: physicists,” Bateman joked. “So what [Jost] told me was, I have these equations that I think explain your phenomenon.”

Jost hypothesized that chromosomes have sticky areas, and when in motion the sticky areas can find each other and “button” together. After running tests, Bateman found that his model could explain how chromosomes come together.

“All we have to do is think about what could be sticky on DNA. And if it can find sticky things, then we know just those sticky things shaking around it brings our chromosomes together,” Bateman said. “We’re working on this in the lab right now, but if I can land somewhere in the next ten years of having a piece of explanation for how these work, that would feel pretty good.”

Reflecting on his new title of Linnean Professor of Biology, Bateman said he is excited and honored to be the second geneticist in this role.

“It’s a real honor and an acknowledgment from the College and your peers that they think you’ve done a good job at this professor-ing,” Bateman said. “The two people before me were Bruce Kohorn—who was a real mentor for me—and Bill Steinhart—who was a geneticist here for many, many years at the College. Following in that lineage has also been a special part of this position.”