Michael Sussman is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry. His research opens avenues of discovery through the development and application of innovative genomic technologies such as large-scale reverse genetics and new instrumentation for analyzing DNA and RNA. He sat down with Department of Biochemistry science writer Renata Solan to talk about his research, collaborations, and experience as an innovator.
What is your research about?
My lab studies plasma membrane protein chemistry. The enzyme that I’ve been studying for more than 50 years — a transporter protein found only in plants and fungi — converts chemical energy into electrical energy better than any enzyme in nature. We are looking at how this enzyme is regulated: responses to light, to gravity, to pathogens. I also develop innovative new genomic technologies to help my lab — and others around the world — reveal basic molecular biological secrets.
What excites you about scientific research?
What excites me is learning something about nature that nobody else knows. I like to go deeper into biology and basic science so that I can understand things at the most basic and fundamental possible level. Getting to the heart of the matter, that’s what I care about. I’m also not afraid to change directions or explore a new field when that’s what I need to do to see what I’m studying from a new angle. It’s not easy to change fields and remain competitive but in the right environment, like here in the Department of Biochemistry, you can do it and often be successful.
How do you develop research questions?
All of biology is run by chemical and physical principles, so I have to ask questions like a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist. That’s how I can dig deep and learn as much as I can about the basic physical and chemical principles to understand plasma membrane signal transduction.
How does your work benefit from research partnerships and collaborations?
I am the ultimate experimentalist. But to be successful at experiments, you also have to understand theory. When I hit those roadblocks where there’s theory behind what I’m seeing and I don’t know what it is yet, I have colleagues in fields that I know less about, that I can call and ask, “Hey, what does this result mean?” It’s a collegial place to work.
What inspires you to innovate?
Curiosity, plain and simple. I love developing new genome technologies to help reveal basic biological mechanisms. These technologies allow us to ask questions and find answers that we couldn’t do before. I like to use the most innovative technology to answer the biological question I’m asking the most comprehensive and basic way. And if that technology isn’t available, then I help develop it. I encourage scientists not to underestimate the emotional and intellectual satisfaction that comes from seeing your basic research go out there and do something important in a clinical or private sector setting.
How have the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and entrepreneurial programs across UW–Madison’s campus contributed to your experience as an innovator?
I’ve founded multiple companies based on the technologies developed in my lab. Here at UW–Madison, we have in WARF one of the best and well-funded organizations to help us commercialize the fruits of our brains. WARF is a big reason I am here in Madison. In addition to patents that I hold with them, they have helped to commercialize my work and start companies. We developed a new way to photolithographically synthesize DNA immobilized on a glass slide that became a company called NimbleGen, which was later sold to Roche. Now, with new technology I’ve been developing and again in collaboration with WARF, I have started a second company called Immuto Scientific that uses our mass spectrometry-based technology to look at protein dynamics, structures, and interactions. The technology is being used to develop new generations of drugs, including treatments for cancer and other human ailments.
The Sussman Lab is currently funded in part by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, a gift provided by the Chris and Susie Salm Foundation, and WARF.