Prendergast '07 clones gene and adds to the great collective of scientific knowledge

What's remarkable about how Andrew Prendergast '07 spent so much of his Knox career in a science lab is that he did not begin his education with an interest in science.

?I started taking science classes and apparently I did reasonably well in them. Before my summer break, Dr. (Judy) Thorn pulled me out and asked, ?What are you going to do?? and I said ?I don?t know probably lifeguard.? She said ?No you are going to work in a lab.?

Prendergast has earned his bachelor's degree in neuroscience and spent his last year on a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Richter funded honor?s project that stemmed from a research project he joined in his sophomore year at Knox.

As one of the first neuroscience majors at Knox, Prendergast says he realized that he wasn't as interested in creative writing as he was in his introduction to psychology class. ?I took the class to fill that distribution requirement and I just loved it,? he says. ?Questions like how things at this very complicated cellular molecular level and making these tiny, tiny changes and how they have huge affects on whom we are and how we act. You cause damage to one part of the brain and suddenly you can?t speak properly, or at all. Those questions are very interesting to me.?

Prendergast?s ongoing research project experience, which Thorn started in 2000, cemented his future in cutting-edge science research. ?We are a developmental lab and focused on cell development to an entire organism standpoint. We can use certain kinds of florescent chemicals to look at the distribution of a protein at different stages of development,? he says.

His honor?s project studies a particular cell protein during a particular stage in early neurodevelopment. ?The utility of this research is looking at understanding this from a basic scientific standpoint. How does the nervous system develop? Does this have something to do with development? That is novel, and it is a discovery made right here in this lab,? he says.

With his honor?s project complete, Prentergast has earned countless hours sleeping on the lab couch and a massive thesis of more than 200 pages, and is credited with cloning a frog gene. ?I like to tell people that for my honors I cloned a frog gene and I sequenced it and I contributed this piece of information. That is totally new genetic data. I reiterate that it is small things a lot of the time, but it is still cool to know there is a database somewhere where hopefully someday we will submit this and will have a sequence that I generated and able to be add to the great collective of scientific knowledge,? he says.

Prentergast admits that his professors were a major influence in his success at Knox and that teaching is something he has on a pedestal. ?I have really tight relationships with my faculty that hopefully will last throughout my life and guide me in my future. I have ended up with more surrogate parents at Knox.?

Prendergast notes that he is at another starting point of his career. ?Coming out of high school I had no idea of what I would be doing. At the same time that I had all this freedom, I had all these people directing me and opening doors and showing me opportunities that I didn?t think I had. Coming in as a prospective English major, I thought I wouldn?t do well in science. And then someone says, ?Well maybe you just need a really good person to help you see that it is possible.?

Andrew Prendergast is pursuing his PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle.