Patricia Jansma
Assistant Staff Scientist, Arizona Research Laboratories-Division of Neurobiology, University of Arizona

B.S. in Food Science (minor in Marine Biology), Pennsylvania State University, 1981
M.S. in Microbiology, University of Georgia, 1983

What can you do if you enjoy applying state-of-the-art microscopy to a broad array of biological questions? Patty Jansma oversees the ARLDN Electron and Light Microscopy facility at the University of Arizona. She supervises the use of the transmission electron microscope and confocal microscope as well as ancillary equipment used in preparing samples for both microscopes. She trains faculty, staff, and students in preparative techniques and proper use of the equipment and is responsible for keeping the equipment in working order. In the past four years, the facility has expanded to include digital processing of the images obtained in the confocal microscope.

The following is a transcript of Ms. Jansma's presentation at Biology Career Day 1997:

My name is Patty Jansma, and I work next door in the Gould-Simpson Building for the Division of Neurobiology. There are ten faculty members. Within that group, we have three core facilities, microscopy being one. When I first started there seven years ago, we had an electron microscope, and I did a lot of the training in terms of anybody that came in with a project from any one of the labs or a visiting professor - teaching them how to do the microscopy, helping them sort out protocols, dealing with the service engineers as needed if there was a problem with the microscope, keeping the dark rooms up in terms of change.

In 1991, we also added a confocal microscope, which is a light microscope that allows you to optically section tissue, and it was a huge advance in terms of looking at whole neurons in the brain. We have been running 50 to 60 hours per week once we got up and running and getting all of the money together. At the time that we began the microscopy, it was all digital, and we didn't have a network with the department. Now we've got 120 people on the email network, and most of the publications go out as digital programs, be it grants or publications. We've had three cover publications: Journal of Neuroscience, Development, and Journal of Comparative Neurology during the past year. A lot of the pretty pictures you see on the covers of these magazines were from a confocal microscope.

The computer facilities we have also can do 3-D reconstruction, make slides, dye sublimation prints, and that is primarily spun off. We have the other three people who have come that run it. There is also a project that has spun off - it's called Fly Brain - that's on the World Wide Web, and a lot of it is a microscope-based project. We have approximately 120 people ranging from undergraduate to visiting faculty that we deal with. You have to be able to deal with a large range of people and personalities, and try and figure out exactly what it is that they want to do and if it is even feasible. That's basically what I do on a day-to-day basis. We also have things like dealing with sales people, service people, managing budgets in terms of the money we have.

My background: I have a B.S. degree from Penn State and a master's from the University of Georgia. I did an undergraduate project, sort of a senior thesis project, in electron microscopy. That sort of was involved a little further during my M.S. program, and all of the lab technician type positions that I've had have used one form or another of microscopy. They are sort of an evolving position. As things change, you are sort of flexible to meet up to whatever is needed. In our department, it is really nice in the sense that if you need to know microbiology, you can walk down the hall and find someone doing that work.

Questions and Answers

How did you specifically get this job through the lab? I mean, were you interested in being a lab tech and other positions like microscopes, when now you are working with a very nice confocal microscope?
It sort of just happened. I moved here to work with somebody in biochemistry, and we were doing some 3-D reconstruction of muscle - John Hildebrand who had just started setting up the Division of Neurobiology. In setting up the facility, he received a grant to help set up the electron microscope and hired Leslie Tolbert in, who is my supervisor from Georgetown, to run the facility. So we were invited, and Gail Burd was also invited to use the Division of Neurobiology's microscopy facility.

Then about a year or so later, they wrote for a grant, which was called the Program Project Grant, which is a five-year multi-grant with core facility money built into it. I was written in as manager of the new facility. So when that was funded, I moved in. When we had just the EM, I did the actual projects. Now since the confocal has come in, I really haven't had that much time. I basically help other people set up their own projects. So after we had the EM facility running, we then were funded to get a confocal. Confocal set up was done strictly by the seat of our pants.

So basically it kind of evolved from a basic tech job?
Yes, and we still are evolving. And also the whole computing facility - we have Macs, Pentiums, Sun workstations, and that was a spin off from all of this because it is a necessity. The confocal part is just huge. It's phenomenal amounts of data, and the computers just keep getting faster. It's just phenomenal. What was state of the art a few years ago is no longer even close. When we bought the confocal, it had a 486/33, and that was the fastest thing available. Now it's nothing. Computing power is just phenomenal. You need to do this and that, and keep up with it.

Also, how do you avoid becoming obsolete? You have all of your data on these optical disks, and what happens when that drive dies? You go out and look for a new one, and they say, "Oh, well, we only sell gigabyte drives now," and you have a 650 megabyte optical. So we have been dealing with that kind of issue now. There are a lot of different things that are involved in it, but basically a lot of the confocal. There's a listserv available on the web that has been really helpful. When we first got the confocal, for the first two years, we were the only ones on campus, and I think the only ones in the state, that had one. So we talked to people in California, we talked to people in Washington, wherever there were confocals around, and that's how we figured out how to correct our problems.

To get the job, you just did a very good job as a tech?
Yes. That's exactly what I did.

You had a connection though, right?
Oh, certainly, you know someone and then they wrote you into the proposal. It's by working or volunteering in a lab. I went from Georgia to here because Gail's technician that's here had been at the University of Georgia and had mentioned it to a friend of his that I was looking for a position. That's how I ended up in Tucson. I had a commitment for a one-year grant, and it's just gone from there.

What do you not like about your job, all three of you?
I think, be it university or industry, it's the same sort of things. You have a lot of personalities and a lot of hierarchical structures that you have to learn to deal with. Sometimes that can become extraordinarily frustrating.



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