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Shoa Clarke
Shoa Clarke's childhood in Maine was often dominated by his single mother's struggle to keep the family out of homeless shelters – an experience, he says, that made him want to give back to his community. So he worked as a tutor and martial arts instructor for disadvantaged youth, and as an advocate for homeless rights. And when he left for Cornell University, he took with him his childhood dream of becoming a physician.
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Shoa Clarke
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
Photo: Barbara Ries
A high-resolution photograph is available on request.
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At Cornell, a conversation with his freshman advisor altered his course. "He wanted to know how my first semester had gone," Clarke remembers. "I told him I missed taking math. I'd always had math classes, and I was on the math team in high school – it was a fun thinking game for me."
His advisor, Cutberto Garza (now Provost and Dean of Faculties at Boston College), introduced Clarke to Carlos D. Bustamante, a Cornell professor and alumnus of the HHMI predoctoral fellowships in biological sciences program, who integrates informatics and genomics. Clarke talked with Bustamante, took one of his courses, and was hooked.
"I started getting really excited about how much of an impact information technology could have on the way we do research," he said. Then Bustamante took Clarke to a conference at which one presenter after another talked about the medical implications of genomics. One speaker, for example, talked about the population genetics and evolution of plasmodia, the pathogens that cause malaria. "Work from his lab could eventually lead to new drugs to treat malaria and a better understanding of how we can prevent drug resistance," Clarke said. But few of the presenters were interested in pursuing those implications.
"I knew then that was my interest," Clarke said. "To turn those implications into reality. As an M.D./Ph.D., I could have leverage in the field, in terms of bringing all of these great things happening in genomics to the level of individual people."
Clarke worked with Bustamante for two years, studying genes that have been conserved in humans but lost in chimpanzees. In 2005, he was nominated to participate in HHMI's Exceptional Research Opportunities Program, which provides talented undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds with summer research experiences in the labs of HHMI investigators and HHMI professors. He spent a summer at Columbia University working with HHMI investigator Barry Honig to create a new way to predict a protein's structure from its amino acid sequence.
Now in his second year in Stanford's M.D./Ph.D. program, Clarke, 24, has started his Ph.D. research in the lab of Gill Bejerano, who uses computational approaches to learn more about the vertebrate genome. Clarke is helping to identify gene regulatory elements and understand their role in vertebrate evolution.
These regulatory elements appear to drive the timing and scope of gene expression, and may be responsible for many of the differences between closely related species, such as humans and chimpanzees. "We look different, but our protein coding is similar," Clarke said. "It may be that we use the same genes, but we use them at different times and at different levels of expression."
Clarke sees research in his future. His interests include how genes influence infectious disease susceptibility and complex diseases like diabetes, as well as using computational models to understand how the genome responds to environmental stress.
"One of the things I like about this work is that it gives me lots of options," he says. "I don't want to specialize in one gene or one species, but I can contribute in a lot of ways."
Clarke continues to contribute outside of the lab, as well. He spends most weekends at the Pacific Free Clinic, which provides free health care for the homeless and uninsured in San Jose. Among other projects, he is helping the clinic transition from paper to electronic medical records, a change he believes will vastly improve care. "Just reading a paper chart can be difficult – reading the handwriting, or dealing with a page falling out," he said. "It's really clear that changing simple things can affect the way health care is provided."
"On top of having all the qualities that can make him a leader in the field of his choice, Shoa has his heart in the right place," says Bejerano. "I hope this rare combination will allow Shoa to make a difference not only in science, but also in other people's lives."
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