Dr. Joan A. Steitz
Profile
Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, and HHMI Investigator.
Renowned molecular biologist, famed for her discoveries involving ribonucleic acid (RNA). Received her degree in chemistry from Antioch College.
Accepted to Harvard Medical School, but declined the invitation and instead decided to pursue Harvard’s new PhD program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and then became a trailblazer for women scientists. She accomplished her postdoc at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, United Kingdom.
A tireless promoter of women in science, who has served in numerous professional capacities, including as Scientific Director of the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research, Rita Allen Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee and as editorial board member of Genes and Development.
Married to Dr. Thomas Steitz, also a Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale and winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
As part of a series of profiles illuminating our Rita Allen Foundation team, their careers, accomplishments and aspirations, Dr. Steitz recently shared some of her thoughts with Rita Allen Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Good Christopherson.
Ms. Christopherson: Would you share how you chose a career in science and research, and tell us about your mentors along the way?
Dr. Steitz: I have always had an interest and fascination in science. My father was very supportive and encouraged me. It was so important to have a father who supported my goals. My mother was supportive too, but having my father’s support meant a great deal to me as a young woman. He was a high school guidance counselor who I think wished he had become an engineer.
Throughout high school and Antioch College, I pursued science, and my degree from Antioch is in chemistry. Molecular biology as we know it today did not really exist at the time; it was at its very beginnings.
Through a program at Antioch, I was fortunate to be assigned to a work-study lab at MIT headed by Alex Rich. I had a wonderful experience there, and it really sparked my interest in research and experimentation.
Since I had come into contact with women physicians, but never women scientists or professors or a woman heading a lab, I decided to pursue a medical career and was invited to attend Harvard Medical School. But the summer before medical school, I landed a job with Joseph Gall, who has accomplished ground-breaking work as a cell biologist. He was then at the University of Minnesota, but later at Yale and the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore. He is well known for being very supportive and encouraging to women with an interest in science. He assigned me my first project examining whether ciliary basal bodies from the protozoan Tetrahymena pyriformis contain nucleic acid—a reasonable question since mitochondria had just been shown to possess their own complement of DNA. I found myself hooked and working nights and weekends, and by August, I decided I wanted to change my plans. Fortunately, a prospective student in Harvard's graduate program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology had declined to attend, and I was asked to take the open slot.
In 1963, I became the sole woman in a class of 10 to begin graduate studies in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard. I had hoped to work with a particular professor at Harvard, who ended up discouraging me for being a woman, saying I would get married, have kids and then what? As disappointing as the encounter was, it ended up being fortuitous in that I became the first female grad student in the lab of James Watson. He had never accepted a female grad student up to that point, but he was wonderful to me and several other women pursuing careers in science. He was an excellent mentor and very supportive of my work, teaching me to focus on the important questions in science.
I met my husband at Harvard and from there we went off to Cambridge, England, which was a hot-bed for molecular biology research. This was a place where being a woman scientist worked to my advantage. There was a project floating around the lab that everyone realized was extremely difficult, exciting but with seemingly little promise for success. It was obvious it would require a long-term commitment. Since the male postdocs in the lab figured they would have to compete for academic appointments within 3 years, they were reluctant to seize the project. I never anticipated that I would be in academia, so I decided to take it on.
My work on how ribosomes start translation on mRNAs was new and promising and I was being invited to make presentations within 2 years. At the same time, the 1970’s women’s movement was exploding in the United States and President Nixon’s Secretary of Labor, George Schultz, telegraphed a message to universities that federal funds could be withheld if they did not hire more women academics. I was in an exciting, new field and amazingly found myself being offered faculty positions. Although Berkeley, where my husband had been invited to teach, was not interested in accepting women faculty, Fred Richards, a forward-thinking scientist at Yale, welcomed me. I have been at Yale ever since.
Ms. Christopherson: What have been some of the highlights of your distinguished career?
Dr. Steitz: Coming from my background and having to encounter some barriers as a woman scientist, at the beginning I was not entirely sure male grad students would want to work in a lab headed by a woman. But Yale had men who were both eager and very good who joined the lab. We continued working on aspects of my postdoc project, and I received my first recognition-prize in 1975.
Subsequently, we began a new line of research that is related to lupus, an autoimmune disease that develops when patients make antibodies against their own DNA, snRNPs, or ribosomes, the body's protein-making factories. My colleagues and I identified snRNPs as the building blocks of the splicing machinery, which is essential for making functional mRNAs in mammalian cells. We have also studied other snRNPs involved in excising a rare, divergent class of introns and still other snRNPs involved in pre-ribosomal RNA processing. Today our work continues to focus on non-coding RNAs and the roles they play in the regulation of gene expression.
I am in a department at Yale that belongs to the Medical School as well as to the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences, and I very much enjoy teaching undergraduates as well as graduate and medical students. Undergraduate students are especially exciting because they are so eager to learn and absorb.
Ms. Christopherson: What should be done to encourage more individuals to pursue a path in science, including women and others who are under-represented in the sciences?
Dr. Steitz: You have to love discovery to want to be a scientist. It is extremely exciting when you make an important finding and realize that only you and a few other people in your lab know how something works. It is almost as much fun sharing the joy of discovery with younger colleagues. You have to be passionate about the experimentation, discovery and sharing.
It is a heck of a lot better today for women in science than it was when I began my career, but there are still obstacles. So we cannot assume smooth sailing for women. We hear about the leaky pipeline. Women represent a large part of the talent pool for research science, but many data sources indicate that they are more likely than men to “leak” out of the pipeline in the sciences before obtaining a tenured position at a college or university.
I think the problem is that women, after achieving their M.D. or Ph.D. in the life sciences, worry too much about what they are going to be doing in 10 years. In fact, most of us have no idea what life will be like in 2 years. I do not think men worry about their long-term future so much or compare themselves to what they think they should be doing in 10 years. It is ridiculous to worry and to try to match what someone else much more senior is doing.
My advice to women is to take it one day at a time. If this is what you want to do, it will work out. Marriage, children, whatever, other goals will fall into place.
It is also critical for women to have a supportive network around them, where they can turn for reinforcement and encouragement. I had my father and then my husband. A supportive spouse is vital.
Ms. Christopherson: We greatly appreciate your contributions as a member of the Rita Allen Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee, which plays an integral role in the Scholars selection process. Would you kindly share your thoughts about the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars program?
Dr. Steitz: I find that the interview process is a truly positive and unique aspect of the program’s selection process. Most other awards do not include interviews and you can only get so much from the written submissions. Meeting the applicants and finding out that they are not what you necessarily expected is much more valuable than relying on written documents. I have served on a number of selection committees and getting to know the Scholars one-on-one is a major strength of the Rita Allen Foundation program.
I also like that not everyone is doing the same type of research. There is a wide selection of projects to choose from and support. It is clear that these young researchers stand out, and I am attracted to those in science who are doing something a little bit different.