Biophysical Society Bulletin | November 2024

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Sarah L. Keller Area of Research Liquid-liquid phase separation of membranes

Institution University of Washington, Seattle

At-a-Glance

Sarah L. Keller, the Duane and Barbara LaViolette Endowed Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, took an academic journey that led her to science, physics, and eventually biophysics. With the support of mentors and colleagues, she found success and her “scientific family.”

Sarah L. Keller

When she was young, Sarah L. Keller remembers worrying about what she would be when she grew up. “I had no idea how to choose. Maybe that’s one reason I feel at home in biophysics, where I think about interdisciplinary topics!” Keller feels that “every life decision has both a push and a pull. My family moved across the US in my first year of high school. At my old school, my most engaging mentors taught writing. In my new school, my science teachers were much stronger, especially my physics teacher, Steve Mathis . This shift pushed me away from the humanities I had previously favored and pulled me toward science. Plus, I reasoned that if I had a science-related career, I could support myself and a family.” In college, her physics lab courses were so much more enjoyable than her other labs that she became a physics major. Her next task was to decide what kind of physics she might pursue. Keller told the Living Histories online series (https:/ tinyurl.com/TheLHSeries) in a 2023 talk, “In my sophomore year, I was excited to be chosen to be on a team of students going to Fermilab, [but spent] the summer soldering 4-mi cron wires 4 millimeters apart on a drift chamber. It was mind numbing. So, particle physics wasn’t as much fun as I had imagined it would be. Neither was astrophysics. My professor kept hitting on me. I did not want to enter a field in which I’d ever have to interact with him again.” By the time she started graduate school in physics at Prince ton University, Keller had identified which branches of physics pushed her away, but she had not yet felt a strong pull to any others. Keller shares, “Like most scientists, I can construct a compelling story in which I sound as if I brilliantly planned my training and foundational experiments to amass the right skills and results in the right labs to then answer important questions. However, when I was a student and postdoctoral fellow, I found stories like that demotivating because they im plied that success in science required an unattainable level of genius and foresight,” she says. “A more accurate description of my career is that I was pulled to work with people I liked and respected, which led me to do my best science because I enjoyed working with them.”

“My single best career move was, as a second-year gradu ate student, to notice how the members of Sol Gruner ’s lab enjoyed each other as much as they enjoyed science, and to decide that I wanted to work with them, even though I had no previous interest in biophysics. Sol proposed a risky project. He hypothesized that ion channels surrounded by lipids shaped like cylinders would function differently than ion channels surrounded by lipids shaped like cones, due to the membrane’s lateral pressure profile. He introduced me to Adrian Parsegian , who introduced me to Sergey Bezrukov , who taught me everything I know about black lipid membranes. Our data showed that Sol’s hypothesis was right, and I pub lished my first paper in the Biophysical Journal . BJ was the right place to reach broad audiences interested in rigorous physical measurements of membranes, and it still is. I’m honored to be speaking at the BPS Satellite Meeting honoring Adrian on the Friday before the 2025 BPS Meeting.” Keller recounts, “Attending grad school in the US was a good fit for me. I probably would not have earned a PhD or become a biophysicist in a different academic structure. To afford grad school, I needed a stipend every year, including during my master’s degree. To become a biophysicist, I needed the flexibility to completely change my branch of physics and my research group, even when I was years into my PhD.” Keller further explains, “Some colleagues and I were inter viewed in 2021 for Physics Today about why so many women in physics choose biophysics. I bluntly said it was because ‘there are fewer assholes in biophysics,’ which I maintain is still true, and still important. This leads to the question: how can we further increase collegiality among biophysicists, and attract even more talented scientists into our field? Ideas might include nominating broader populations of colleagues for awards, or introducing more colleagues to each other, or trying even harder to recall the dauntingly vast literature to cite each other better. We won’t always succeed—we are busy, tired, and imperfect humans—but good intent seems like the right place to start.”

November 2024

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