Meet a Whitehead Postdoc: Julia Wucherpfennig

Julia Wucherpfennig is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member and director Ruth Lehmann’s lab studying the relationship between Wolbachia bacteria, which infect many insects around the world, and their insect hosts. We sat down with Julia to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

What is the current focus of your research?

I'm really interested in symbiosis, which is the relationship between two distinct organisms that interact closely, often to the benefit of one or both. A commonly taught example is clownfish making homes in sea anemones: the anemone’s tentacles are poisonous to other fish, which protects the clownfish, and the clownfish in turn helps to clean, feed, and defend the anemone.

The relationship I’m studying is actually a case of endosymbiosis, where one of the organisms lives inside of the other one. I study a bacteria called Wolbachia that lives in about half of all insects. I’m using fruit flies to study how Wolbachia interacts with its hosts. 

This has a lot of real-world applications—Wolbachia is already being used to control the transmission of diseases carried by insects like mosquitoes. If male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia mate with female mosquitoes that are not infected, their offspring will die. In places like Hawaii with invasive mosquitoes, male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia are released to mate with uninfected females in the area and, hopefully, cause a population crash. The work we’re doing to better understand the basic biology of Wolbachia and its interaction with the fruit fly model system could inform such real-world applications in the future.

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

I really liked animals, so for a long time I wanted to be a marine biologist. This was supported by my parents in that we had many different pets growing up. The rule was that they weren't allowed to have any fur or ­­hair, so no cats or dogs, which meant that my brother and I came up with basically every other pet that we could have: fish, crabs, parakeets, and a tortoise that my parents kept for over twenty years.

What led you to a career in research?

When I went to college, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to study. The options I considered as a freshman were biology, physics, and architecture. I dabbled in all three. I didn’t enjoy how much math was involved in physics. Architecture was a lot of fun, but I didn’t like how subjective it was. With biology, I liked doing experiments in the lab and having there be a clear answer that I could build on. Also, I had a great mentor in college, whose lab I worked in for three years, and I think that made a big difference. She did a great job of encouraging us and teaching us to be self-sufficient. I went to Wellesley College, which is an undergrad-only institution, no grad students or postdocs, so all of us had our own projects and a lot of ownership over them. Then, after college, I spent two years working as a research technician in a zebrafish lab, to see if I liked working full time in a bigger lab with graduate students and postdocs. That experience really solidified that I liked being in the lab every day and doing lab work. 

How did you decide to come to Whitehead Institute?

I did my PhD in evolutionary biology, studying fish skeletal evolution. When I was looking for postdocs, I knew I wanted to do something that had an evolutionary biology aspect to it, but I wanted to explore some organisms that had faster generations and more tools than the vertebrate model I worked with (stickleback fish). I saw from Ruth’s website that she had worked on Wolbachia-Drosophila interactions and thought that was really cool, so I emailed her and it worked out.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

I like doing the actual research and being in the lab, so I hope to continue doing that. I’m not sure what form that will take.

What are your hobbies?

I like to bake. In grad school, my lab job was baking people's birthday cakes. I like to bake a bunch of different things. My parents are both German, so I make a lot of German recipes that I've found online or some from my grandmother. My husband and I got married a little over a year ago, and I baked my own wedding cake. So many of the wedding cakes I saw had thick layers of buttercream and sugar on them that I do not like, so I decided to make my own that had marzipan mousse and a berry layer, and then a sponge cake layer on the bottom. I attempted to make it as a tiered cake, but my husband, whose job it was to keep the cake intact when we drove it to my parent’s house for a taste test, said that was too stressful of an experience, so I made individual cakes instead.

I also really enjoy hiking and taking long road trips.

What are your tips for a successful road trip?

The trick is to break it up so you know how far you're going in a certain day, and to find good spots to stop in the middle. Usually, we try to find at least a short hike to do or a loop to walk in the middle of it. When I moved to California for grad school, I drove my car cross country with my mom. We visited a bunch of national parks along the way, and then I did the same thing on the way back, except half the trip with my now-husband, and half with my mom too. We camped in the Grand Canyon and went to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, which is in the middle of nowhere and otherwise would be very hard to get to. That was a lot of fun.

Do you have any pets?

Not right now but I have a lot of succulents – probably too many. 

How many is too many?

For our wedding, we had succulents as decorations. We let people take them home, but were left with many more. I gave some to my parents, but I think I have around forty or fifty of them. They all sit together in one spot. I'm proudest of the ones that I've grown from single leaves that broke off.

One last science question: what is your favorite gene name?

Fruit flies have a lot of fun gene names. Some of my favorites are Asterix and Obelix, which are named after a French comic book, because I have childhood associations with them. I also have a favorite in German, sturkopf, which basically means stubborn. I find that relatable, because you have to be a little stubborn to keep doing science and keep trying new things.

Could you elaborate on that?

Pursuing research takes a lot of persistence and being willing to put up with days, weeks, and months of mostly negative data. If you stick with it, you can get a few moments when you see something really cool and realize that you’re seeing it for the first time—that it’s something no one else has seen before—and that is very rewarding.