Meet a Whitehead Postdoc: Christoph Gäbelein

Christoph Gäbelein is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann’s lab studying how oocytes, which are immature egg cells, avoid the effects of aging during their long dormancies. We sat down with Christoph to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

What is your current research focus? 

Oocytes are immature egg cells, and in many species, they are stored in an inactive state for a long time. For instance, in humans, oocytes form during embryogenesis. This means that if you are female, then during your own development in the womb, you produce all the oocytes you will ever have and store them until you begin ovulating. The special thing about these cells is that they don’t really age. Aging has effects on fertility, but developing embryos will not show aging effects. If a woman has a baby from an oocyte that matures into an egg when she is twenty years old or forty years old, that baby will come out the same age: zero. That is fascinating, because the base age of those egg cells is very different.

I’m exploring what makes these cells avoid aging, with a particular focus on the cells’ mitochondria, organelles that produce energy and metabolites for the cell. Mitochondria are suspected to be major drivers of the aging process because they produce reactive oxygen species, which contribute to aging. In oocytes, mitochondria need to be in an inactive state that doesn’t produce reactive oxygen species, to prevent aging, and yet they have to be ready to become very active and produce lots of energy for the cell as soon as the egg is ready for fertilization. How this switch works is the focus of my research.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I grew up in a relatively small village in Germany and my biggest idol was a German soccer player named Jürgen Klinsmann. I played a lot of soccer when I was small, and I wanted to be a professional soccer player.

How did you first become interested in a science career?

Even as a kid, I was very opposed to dogmatic ways of thinking. I disliked if something didn't have an explanation, and enjoyed science lessons. After I finished the equivalent of high school, I was not super set on a career path. Then my big brother started studying biology, and I also liked biology, so I decided to pursue that at university—but I wasn’t sure I would make a career of it. At the end of my bachelor’s degree, I participated in an iGEM competition for synthetic biology, where you could basically start your own summer research project. This was when the first publications on CRISPR gene editing were coming out, and we did a project on using CRISPR in human cells. That experience pushed me to have a deeper interest in biology, and after that, I felt like, Okay, this is the thing for me. This is what I should do.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in the lab? 

During my PhD, I was developing a technique to transplant mitochondria between cells. Basically, I would suck them out of a cell and then put them into another cell. It took around nine months of trying and optimizing to really get this to work. The first couple of times when it really worked, after the struggle of trying for so long, were really amazing. I could see the transplanted mitochondria moving around in the new cells, fusing with the other cells’ mitochondria, diffusing, and swimming around. That was really exciting.

What are your hobbies?

I've always done a lot of sports, and right now I'm active in triathlon. That entails doing a lot of endurance training. I swim with the MIT Masters team. I have a friend group here that goes cycling, and I’m relatively active in the running community. I enjoy running with the Whitehead Institute Running Club, and I am doing some smaller competitions here. I find that sports give me time to think and blow off steam. They are also a central part of my social life; the swimming team, the running team, the friends I cycle with.

How did you get involved in triathlon? 

I grew up playing soccer for a long time, and then I played a lot of beach volleyball. I always did some endurance sports like running on the side, as a form of training. After I moved to Zurich for my PhD, I couldn't fit playing beach volleyball into my schedule anymore, because there was not a good group at my campus and I would have had to travel. I didn't have good connections in Zurich, so I started shifting towards triathlon because at the core it’s a very individual sport. Sports are a big part of my social life, but triathlon has the flexibility that you can always train on your own. Then with the first triathlons I did, I found that, since I had always done endurance training, I was already pretty good. It came easy to me, and that became a positive feedback thing where I kept going.

What’s your advice for getting started in triathlon?

I think the main limitation is that it takes a long time to become good. You have to remain motivated to do it over a long period of time. A lot of people start and they're really motivated to train a couple of times a week, but then they burn out after a couple of months because it is taxing on the body. You need to find something that keeps you motivated and, I think, it’s also important not to go too hard. In endurance sports, especially in running, people tend to get injuries because in the beginning it's easy to increase your volume a lot, but if you do too much that makes you prone to injury. The key is constant, sustainable training. If you do that, you’ll always get better, but it’s a slow process. You have to take it easy.

Is that your philosophy for research too? It’s an endurance game?

Yes, totally. I feel like you have to be able to fail a lot and still continue. Another thing I believe about research is that not knowing things, and being somewhat ignorant of the history of your field, can be helpful. Sometimes, in older fields like fruit fly genetics (that’s the model organism I use), there is a very set framework of how people think about genes and their functions. If you come from a different field with different concepts in mind, that can be liberating. It's easier to poke holes and to explore things in spaces that are unknown but that perhaps were not being explored because of the known framework. I guess the thing that’s really helpful for research is being unbiased, and the less familiar you are with a field’s existing biases and assumptions, the more open you will be to new approaches and ideas.

What’s your favorite meal to cook?

I cook a lot of pasta. I grew up eating a lot of pasta because my mom always made it, and it was my favorite meal as a kid. Also, as a kid, I didn't really eat meat, and so now I love ratatouille. I prepare a bunch of ratatouille and then later I can eat it with pasta, couscous, rice, or other carbs.

Do you like to travel?

Since my family is in Europe, I go back to Switzerland frequently. Additionally, this year, my family and I went traveling in the US for the first time. We just had a rental car and a tent, and we went to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon, and that was awesome. My vacations are almost always camping vacations, partly because of the price, but also because I like the lifestyle of living as the day goes. I like being up when it's light out and going to sleep when it’s dark. 

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

I want to stay in academia, so hopefully in ten years I will be running my own lab. Working towards that is a strong focus right now. Then, outside of my career, I hope to expand my family. I don’t have many material goals, but I hope that I’m creating a good atmosphere and good surroundings for myself and my family.