Megan Taylor is an Honors College Fellow from Little Rock, Arkansas, studying mechanical engineering. Last spring, she was published as a co-author on an academic article, “The mycelium of the Tramete’s versicolor synn. Coriolus versicolor (Turkey tail mushroom) exhibit anti-melanoma activity in vitro” in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, which studied the therapeutic potential of T. versicolor mycelium extract in treating melanoma.
Samples of mushroom we prepared for extract
My story of getting published as a co-author on an academic article begins as a plan for my high school science fair. I asked another student, Rocky Lowenthal, who was participating in the science fair what they were planning on researching and received a staggering amount of research papers discussing the elementary steps of using Turkey Tail mushrooms as a cancer treatment–an idea originating from Chinese medicine. Rocky had already contacted UAMS faculty asking for resources, and Nathan Avaritt, an instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAMS, was incredibly helpful with educating us on the cancer process. UAMS liked our mushroom idea and with the help of Billie Heflin, a research associate and lab manager, and professor Alicja Urbaniak, an instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, we received funding for the project. Professor Urbaniak led us in developing an extract from different parts of the mushroom and testing it against both melanoma and skin cells. She let us know that the extract displayed cytotoxic behavior to melanoma cells while leaving non-cancerous skin cells unaffected, and that we had a good chance of getting this information published. In my spring semester of freshman year, I received an email that the research had been published (addressed to professor Taylor, which I thought was hilarious).
While the research process is intimidating at first, all it boils down to is patience, open mindedness, and the ability to recognize what you don’t know. Here are tips I learned along the way that helped my work find its way to publication.
1) Be open to other people’s ideas. Don’t try to take on an entire project yourself or carry the expectation that your plan is the right one. I joined my lab partner’s initial plan–an idea I would have never come up with myself–because I thought it was interesting and had potential. I didn’t (and still don’t) know much about biology, but I knew I would learn something from the process. Trying to control everything limits your potential. I put trust in my lab partner to make well informed decisions and it allowed us both to achieve so much more than we would have individually.
Rocky Lowenthal and I with Dr. Nathan Avaritt (left)
2) Contact as many people as you can with a clear idea of what you’d like to do. I would say to contact lots of people because not everyone will have the resources to help you, or even respond at all. To be fair, we were two high school students wanting to work in a bio lab. We got a lot of responses saying to we should contact researchers again later in our academic careers. But don’t take that response as an insult to you or your project. Dealing with rejection is an important skill when you are trying to get something off the ground.
As for our process, we initially contacted the head of the UAMS cancer department, Allen Tackett, Deputy Director of Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and Scharlau Family Endowed Chair for Cancer Research. Professor Tackett connected us to Nathan Avaritt, who manages research grants. With his help, we received funding, and were connected to professor Urbaniak who could help us with research. While not everyone you contact will able to directly help you, they can certainly help you find the person who can. There is no harm in asking a favor!
3) Expect to do a lot of waiting. This project was intended to be finished by my high school science fair in March 2022. We had hardly done any lab work at that time and I became very discouraged. We continued working on the project anyway, though, and I chalked it up to a learning experience if anything. The idea of getting published had not entered my mind until the mushroom extract proved to be cytotoxic to melanoma and harmless to non-cancerous skin cells. Even then, the paper wasn’t published until almost a full year after the planned end date. Even though there was trouble in the initial plan, being flexible and patient allowed us to be published–which I’d much prefer over being done on time.
4) You will take at least one good lesson out of every project you start. Whether it’s your expertise or not, you will learn something if you are open to it. Admittedly, I wasn’t familiar with most of the biology behind the process, but the experience of testing, failing and testing again was definitely a learning experience and my major takeaway from this project. Ironically, this project was part of the reasoning behind why I switched my major from pre-med to mechanical engineering. While being published was extremely rewarding, I realized that this wasn’t the type of research I could see myself working on in college. I learned to be flexible with my college plan and recognize when something might look like the right path on paper, but not in practice. Sometimes you find out your path by learning what does not work for you, and instead of being discouraged, I was excited that I finally knew what plan was right for me.
5) Admit when you don’t know something. As most high schoolers do, I thought I knew everything, but stepping into UAMS, I was immediately proven wrong. I eventually stopped pretending to know what people were talking about, and instead kept an open mind and asked questions. I learned so much more the second way. In the end, it wasn’t the biology that taught me the most but the logistics of working in a research lab that stuck with me. Something as simple as sending an email coordinating schedules or just navigating a conversation about topics you know little about were valuable lessons I took with me into college.
There are so many more lessons to take from a research project than just the facts themselves. You learn how to work with people, how to deal with failure, and how to communicate effectively. Even if you don’t plan on going into research whatsoever, there are so many more applications you can benefit from. I would recommend the experience to anybody.