Home Village Times Herald

Long Island in the Sixties opens at the LIM

by TBR Staff - July 9, 2016

0 786

Long Island in the 60s — A typical teenage girl’s bedroom from the late 1960s. Photo from LIM

Above, a typical teenage girl’s bedroom of the late 1960s. Photo courtesy of the Long Island Museum

By Ellen Barcel

Back in 1964-1965 some very excited New Yorkers (as well as visitors from all over the world) attended the World’s Fair held in Queens. The last time a world’s fair was held in New York was 1939!

The 1960s was a time of the Beatles. It was the time of John Denver and other folk musicians. It was a time when the Vietnam War was escalating, a time of protest and peace marches. “Make Love Not War” and “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way” were just some of the slogans commonly heard. It was a time of the early growth of Stony Brook University, founded in 1957 in Oyster Bay and moved to the Stony Brook campus in 1962 on land donated by local philanthropist Ward Melville.

It was also a time when Long Island was growing by leaps and bounds. Housing developments were springing up everywhere, taking over former farmland. While the housing boom of the 1950s was felt in Nassau County, Suffolk’s boom took place in the 1960s.

The Long Island Museum’s new exhibit, Long Island in the Sixties, explores this decade of growth through clothing, photographs and other items of popular culture. A large time line goes throughout the exhibit noting the events of the decade.

Exhibit curator and Director of Collections and Interpretation Joshua Ruff said, “There are five video installations, several of which play music, most notably a film of the famous Beatles concert…”

Said Julie Diamond, museum director of communications, “One thing that struck me [in the exhibit] was a video of the Beatles playing at Shea Stadium. I was imagining myself being there, with all those girls screaming.” One section of the exhibit focuses on clothing: the mod style of the ‘60s “and another more elegant, dressy section. All of the clothing is from our collection,” Diamond said. Pieces were donated to the museum over the years. “It gives us a chance to bring out clothing which we don’t often see.”

Ruff added that there are several vignettes, including “a stylish modernist Hamptons living room, filled with great contemporary furnishings and art … and a middle-class suburban living room with a wildly patterned couch [and] a 1965 Zenith color television set (the dawn of color TV).” The teenage girl’s bedroom, “includes a lot of pop culture artifacts (the Monkees, Beatles, a big record album collection, and all the types of objects you’d see in such a room in the late ‘60s).” There’s a section on that World’s Fair, President John F. Kennedy’s campaign on the Island and information on Grumman’s role in the 1960s.

Ruff noted, “We decided to do the ‘60s exhibition as an outgrowth of the success of a very popular Long Island in the 1950s exhibition that we did in 2012. In the last few years, we have also had a good number of significant donations of 1960s era art and artifacts which we wanted to find a way of showcasing.”

Ruff added that the exhibit includes some really notable artifacts, “the phone that John F. Kennedy used to call Robert Moses to get him to begin building the New York World’s Fair; parts from a lunar modular (antenna mount, strut, micro-shield, copper cables); and terrific dresses from famous designers including Emilio Pucci, Rudy Gernreich and Gino Charles.”

Also at the museum is a second exhibit, Common Ground: The Music Festival Experience curated by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The two exhibits relate, “I think beautifully! There is a lot of content (Woodstock, Altamont, Newport Jazz Festival) in Common Ground that is based in the 1960s … It was important for us to think of these two exhibitions as tied from the very beginning, and we chose to schedule them in this way intentionally,” said Ruff. Common Ground runs through Sept. 5.

This wonderful trip down memory lane will be at the Long Island Museum through Dec. 31. The museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, is located at 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook. Call 631-751-0066 or go to www.longislandmuseum.org for further information. The museum is open Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

Little Free Library opens at West Meadow Beach

by TBR Staff - July 9, 2016

0 2694

Little Free Library with Park Ranger Molly Hastings — Park Ranger Molly Hastings with the new Little Free Library under the pavilion. Photo from Emma Clark Library

When you visit West Meadow Beach in Setauket this summer, be sure to “check out” a book from the Little Free Library, built by Emma Clark Library in partnership with the Town of Brookhaven and Park Ranger Molly Hastings. There’s no need for a library card or to return a book — this is a “take a book, leave a book” concept hosted by Emma Clark as part of an outreach service to the community.

Library staff and the public will be contributing books for the sole purpose of the Little Free Library (books are not owned by Emma Clark — please don’t return your library books here!). The Little Free Library will be maintained by teen volunteers for the months of July and August and will be located under the pavilion at the beach. There is no need to live in Three Village to share in this give and take project, as long as you are a visitor at West Meadow Beach. The Little Free Library will simply enhance the friendly and hospitable feel that already exists in Three Village.

The Little Free Library at West Meadow Beach is registered on www.littlefreelibrary.org and can be found on the site’s official map of all Little Free Libraries across the United States and 70 countries worldwide. For more information, call 631-941-4080.

Coming back home

by Heidi Sutton - July 9, 2016

0 2803

Darlene Treadwell Sells — Darlene Sells Treadwell, back row, far right, poses with family members, Emma S. Clark Memorial Library Director Ted Gutman, front row, far left, and Three Village Historical Society Trustee Frank Turano after the event. Photo by Heidi Sutton

The Three Village Historical Society in Setauket hosted a meet and greet with author Darlene Sells Treadwell last Sunday afternoon.

Originally from Setauket, Treadwell, who lives in Georgia, was in town to promote her new family memoir, “The Bittersweet Taste of the American Dream,” which tells the true story of how her grandmother’s corn bread recipe was stolen by a major baking company.

The event was standing room only as family members read excerpts from the book and Treadwell held a book signing. A copy of her book was officially donated to Emma S. Clark Memorial Library and the Three Village Historical Society for their collections.

As a special treat, Karen Martin, archivist for the TVHS, baked corn muffins using Treadwell’s grandmother’s original recipe for all to try and they were delicious!

Copies of “The Bittersweet Taste of the American Dream” are available for purchase at the Three Village Historical Society’s Gift Shop. For more information, please call 631-751-3730.

Update: Throne-Holst defeats Calone to win Democratic nomination

by Alex Petroski - July 8, 2016

0 317

Calone_ThroneHolstw — Setauket native David Calone, left, was defeated in the Democratic primary for the 1st Congressional District by Anna Throne-Holst, left, Friday.

This post was updated at 11 a.m. on July 13 to include an official vote count.

After more than a week of waiting, it is now known which Democrat will square off against freshman U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) in the race for the 1st Congressional District seat this November.

Former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst defeated Setauket native David Calone after nearly 1,800 absentee ballots were counted last week. After the June 28 Democratic primary the candidates were separated by just 29 votes. In the end, Throne-Holst was left standing. She defeated Calone 6,479 to 6,162.

“I am deeply grateful to all who placed their trust and support in me, and I am truly humbled by the privilege it has been to get to know, share the concerns, and my message with so many,” Throne-Holst said in a statement through a public relations representative Friday. The Suffolk County Board of Elections confirmed Throne-Holst’s victory but couldn’t give an exact vote count on the absentee ballots as of Friday afternoon.

Throne-Holst, wasted little time turning her attention towards Zeldin Friday.

“Lee Zeldin has shown in every way how out of step and wrong he is, not only for Long Island, but for the country,” she said.

Zeldin’s campaign made a statement after the results of the Democratic primary were known Friday.

“Despite the shameful narrative that the Democrats have been desperately attempting to deceive voters into playing along with, First Congressional District voters are smart enough to sort fact from fiction and reject all of the false, negative and partisan attacks on our Congressman being spun up by the Democrats,” they said. “He looks forward to continuing his work for Long Island and our nation in his second term.”

Throne-Holst commended Calone for his efforts during the campaign.

“I want to congratulate Dave Calone on a spirited race, and I share in the respect and support he garnered in the district, as demonstrated by the very close margin and the strength of his candidacy,” she said.

Though he was disappointed by the narrow margin of defeat, Calone quickly supported his party’s candidate in a statement from his campaign Saturday.

“We were outspent by nearly $1 million and fell short by around 300 votes,” Calone said in an email through a press representative. “That’s a testament to the great Democratic volunteers supporting our campaign across the district. We cannot continue being represented by Congressman Lee Zeldin, one of Donald Trump’s loudest advocates in Washington…I urge people across eastern Long Island to join me in supporting our Democratic nominee, Anna Throne-Holst, to replace him this November.”

Representatives from both parties commented on the primary and November’s general election.

“Long Islanders are ready for a change,” Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján said in a statement. “I congratulate Anna Throne-Holst on her hard-fought win, and know she has the background and wide-ranging experience to bring desperately needed leadership to this district.”

At least one Zeldin supporter was encouraged by the tight race in the primary.

“That was a very expensive and underwhelming Democratic Primary for Anna Throne-Holst with such a poor voter turnout showing an incredible lack of enthusiasm for her,” Brookhaven GOP Chairman Jesse Garcia said in a statement. “The choice is clear; Lee Zeldin understands what is right for New York’s First Congressional District, and knows how to fight and produce results for our values and our families. We look forward to Brookhaven’s own Congressman Lee Zeldin serving another term next January.”

A treasure among us: Frank Melville Memorial Park

by TBR Staff - July 8, 2016

1 669

1 of 8

By Katelyn Winter

Peaceful. The word most commonly used to describe Setauket’s Frank Melville Memorial Park captures the tranquil nature scene you find around every bend in the trail.

With turtles sunning themselves on logs in the daytime and deer rustling in the brush just before dusk, the park is a sanctuary for wildlife. According to the park’s newsletter, the Four Harbors Audubon Society, which holds a bird walk at the park on the second Saturday of every month, recorded 76 bird species over the past year. One of the main reasons so many creatures can be seen is simply the atmosphere. On the sign at the entryway to the park, the informative bullet points end in a gentle reminder: Quiet please.

Frank Melville Memorial Park’s gates have been open to the public for 79 years. In 1937, the park was formally dedicated after years of work by Jennie MacConnell Melville and local philanthropist Ward Melville, the wife and son of Frank Melville. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 19, 2010.

The Melville family loved to spend their summers in the Stony Brook area and even had an estate, named Sunwood, built in Old Field in 1919. It is fitting that the place they designed and built to memorialize a loving father and husband would turn into such a picturesque and beloved park by Three Village residents and visitors alike.

“I’ve been coming here for almost ten years. It’s only her second year, though,” said Kaleigh Gorman, motioning to her dog, Dakota, when they were out walking one warm Wednesday evening. “I love how peaceful and scenic the park is and all the memories that are made here.”

There is definitely a lot of room to make memories. With 24 stunning acres to explore, the park is made up of a looping path around the pond and trails that wind through the bamboo forest and the meadows behind the Bates Barn, known locally as “the red barn.” Constructed in the 1920s, the wood for the barn came from buildings at Camp Upton near Yaphank, which was torn down after WWI. A community garden with its own apiary and the Bates House, which can be rented for private events, are just some of the park’s other charming features.

Frank Melville Memorial Park

Hours:

Open all year round from dawn to dusk

Address:

1 Old Field Road, Setauket

Phone number:

Park Office: 631-689-6146

Bates House: 631-689-7054

Website:

www.frankmelvillepark.org

Rules:

No professional photography without park pass

Dogs allowed on leash

Visitors can go for a jog around the pond, stopping to stretch out on the stone bridge with a view of both the pond and the marshlands, or sit on one of several benches that line the edge of the pond under large shade trees. Just to the side of that bridge is the Setauket Mill, a simulated mill with a working water wheel. Built in 1937, it was designed by architect Richard Haviland Smythe, who also designed the Stony Brook Village Center, to represent the long line of mills that had existed on the pond as early as 1660. The building now serves as the park’s headquarters.

You should feel free to bring in snacks for a picnic, but keep in mind to carry out what you carry in, and never feed the wildlife. And watch out! That wildlife also includes a snapping turtle who will snap at anything that moves too close to his algae-covered face. He’s been around for ages. When I was just five years old, I thought I was looking at an otter emerging from the pond, until my mother realized it was the snapping turtle reaching out his long neck for a snack. The snapping turtle is by no means dangerous, though: just one more fun local “resident” to encounter. In fact, local resident Janet Morseman says that one of the reasons she loves coming to the Setauket park is because of how “safe and peaceful” it is.

Whether you are out for a brisk walk, a jog or a leisurely stroll, the ground beneath your feet is always clean, and the park, which is located next to the post office and just a short walk from Patriot’s Rock and Emma S. Clark Memorial Library, is small and well-enough trafficked to feel very safe.

The rules and regulations of Frank Melville Memorial Park, a “Private Park for Public Enjoyment,” are fairly lax and rely on common courtesy. If you’d like to ride your bike there, for example, it’s requested you stay on the paved pathway. Fishing in the pond requires you to join the Mill Pond Fishing Club, with a catch-and-release only policy.

And as far as photography in the park goes, anything more than snapping a picture of your kids with a cell phone (say, having a friend take your family holiday card photo at the park) means signing up to become a Friend of the Park and getting a photography pass. It will cost you $100 annually to be able to shoot photos in the park.

Those aren’t the only ways to take advantage of Frank Melville Memorial Park, though — it has so much to offer. Classes on Tuesday mornings at the Bates Barn — usually at 11 a.m. — are free ways to learn new skills, such as watercolor painting or have fun with a craft or scavenger hunt. One new opportunity is Walk-Yoga-Meditate-Chocolate, which is exactly what it sounds like. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday evenings through August 30, pre-registered participants will meet up in the Bates House parking lot to take a walk, practice yoga, mediate, and indulge in some chocolate. The class, by suggested donation, benefits the Community Growth Center. To learn more or register you can visit www.CommunityGrowthCenter.org or call 631-240-3471.

For those who are looking for a different way to relax, check out Wind Down Sundays, the park’s summer concert series held at the Bates Barn on Sunday evenings at 5:15 p.m. through Aug. 28. A variety of musicians will play classical, rock, jazz, reggae, R&B, and pop, which means there’s at least one Sunday you won’t want to miss, depending on your taste! These events are family-friendly ways to get outside and experience something new in a beautiful location.

So pack up the kids, or the dog, or just a water bottle, and see what Frank Melville Memorial Park has in store for you. You may discover a favorite jogging trail, the perfect bench for reading, or the cutest baby turtle you’ve ever seen. There’s so much to do and see, no matter the time of day. And that’s why Frank Melville Memorial Park is a treasure among us.

Author Katelyn Winter is a rising junior at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., majoring in English and creative writing. She is from Stony Brook and hopes to one day work in the publishing industry.

Go back in history at West Meadow Beach

by TBR Staff - July 8, 2016

0 1125

AuntAmy's-Creekw — Aunt Amy’s Creek at West Meadow Creek, site of an early Native American village and an archaeological exploration by New York State Archaeologist William Ritchie. Photo from Beverly Tyler

By Beverly C. Tyler

From Native American hunter-gatherers through Colonial times, West Meadow Beach, West Meadow Creek and the adjacent tidal wetlands were a valuable resource.

On Saturday, July 16, an historic walk will be conducted by Barbara Russell, historian, Town of Brookhaven, and Beverly Tyler, historian, Three Village Historical Society. The walk, along Trustees Road from the pavilion at West Meadow Beach to the Gamecock Cottage, is sponsored by the Town of Brookhaven and cosponsored by the Three Village Historical Society.

Come and explore the area that sustained Native Americans and provided needed materials for settlers from the Colonial period to the present day. The walk is free and open to the public. No pre-registration required, however be on time as the walk will commence at 10:30 a.m. sharp. An exhibit in the Gamecock Cottage at the end of the walk will include artifacts gathered from the West Meadow Creek area.

We don’t know all the details about life on Long Island before the Europeans came because the people living here did not leave us a written or photographic record of their lives.

Archaeological excavations have given us most of the details of how people lived in this area as early as 5,000 years ago. One of the most famous sites in New York State was a nearby shell midden named The Stony Brook Site, excavated by State Archaeologist William Ritchie in 1955.

From archaeological digs by Ritchie and others, we know that, between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago, the native people were hunters and gatherers, dependent upon hunting local animals and gathering plants, stones, and clay for food, shelter, tools, clothes, and medicines.

The Fischetti Site, a prehistoric Indian site for manufacturing tools and spear points, was discovered during a cultural resource investigation of a proposed residential development in November 1980. Salvage excavations continued through October 1981.

The site, on the east side of West Meadow Creek, opposite the horse show grounds, was occupied by Algonquin Indians about 3,000 years ago. We know they used this location then because of the type of arrow and spear points and blades recovered. The major activity here, on the edge of Stony Brook creek, was making stone tools. We know this by the large quantities of stone flakes and roughed-out stones.

The almost total absence of food remains at the site shows that this was not the location of a village. However, a village site, The Stony Brook Site, did exist about 800 yards to the south, along what is now known as Aunt Amy’s Creek, during the same time period.

For thousands of years the Indians used natural resources, wood, stone, and animals, to make their housing, tools, and clothing. About 3,000 years ago, their way of life changed with the introduction of three things: pottery, the bow and arrow, and horticulture (farming). Like the earlier Indians, the Woodland Indians continued to rely on natural resources.

The artifacts taken from The Fischetti Site are part of the collection of the Three Village Historical Society. Artifacts from the Ritchie site are a part of the collection of the New York State Museum.

Beverly Tyler is the Three Village Historical Society historian and author of books available from the Three Village Historical Society.

Former councilwoman Regina Seltzer dies

by Donna Newman - July 8, 2016

0 678

Former Brookhaven Town councilwoman and environmental activist Regina “Reggie” Seltzer “died overlooking the gardens she ardently tended and the Great South Bay, two of her favorite places,” read a death notice in the New York Times July 1.

She died at her Bellport home June 29 at the age of 86.

Seltzer is survived by her son Eric, his wife Nealle and three granddaughters: Veronica, Jean and Bryn.

Reggie Seltzer left behind a legacy of good works.

In 1979, Seltzer was named Woman of the Year in Environment by this newspaper.

At that time, she was recognized by Cathy McKeen, who wrote: “Since she won a seat on Brookhaven’s Town Board four years ago Regina Seltzer has been an advocate of protecting the environment.”

Village Times honoree Regina Seltzer. Photo from Sherry Binnington

McKeen went on to list her many accomplishments, among them the creation of the town’s Department of Environmental Protection, advocating zoning reform to address haphazard planning and growth and a new sanitary code.

Seltzer was born to Jewish parents in Poland in 1929. Three years later, seeing the injustice and brutality inflicted upon Jews in their town — and fearing what would follow — her parents left Poland, bound for Palestine. In 1937, they followed family and immigrated to New York.

As an adult, Seltzer first worked as a school teacher and librarian, according to Brookhaven Town Supervisor Edward Romaine (R), who eulogized her at the start of the June 30 town board meeting.

She was a councilwoman and member of the town’s planning board. She had returned to school to earn a law degree in her 50s and worked on many environmental issues, often pro bono. She was a true civic leader, Romaine said.

“[Reggie] made a huge difference in the Town of Brookhaven,” said Romaine. “She was brighter than light, easy to work with, principled, honest, straightforward — someone that we’ll all miss in this town government. … I’ve ordered flags at Town Hall to fly at half mast in her honor.”

Friends and colleagues also expressed their grief at the board meeting. Sherry Binnington, of Bellport, met Seltzer in the 1960s, when they became neighbors.

“Reggie Seltzer was a genuine person who had a conscience and was concerned about other people,” Binnington said during the public participation part of the meeting. “She believed that you should try to do everything you can when you see things that are not right.”

Another activist and friend, MaryAnn Johnston, had this to say, “When I first started working as an activist, Reggie was a source of constant encouragement and inspiration.

“She taught me how to do this work … with an uplifted heart. And to celebrate the victories — that they’d be few and far between, but that when you did the job well, they would matter and they would last. It would be what you left behind.”

Poquott Village board swears in mayor, trustee

by TBR Staff - July 6, 2016

0 1400

Poquott_Swearing_201620160705KevinRedding02w — Poquott town board swearing-in ceremony draws a crowd. Mayor Dee Parrish, left, takes the oath of office as Trustee John Mastauskas looks on. Photo by Kevin Redding

By Kevin Redding

On Tuesday, July 5, following an unusually tense and complicated election, the dust seems to have finally settled within the Village Hall of Poquott.

With a newly elected member and all that political turmoil behind them, the mayor and board of trustees can now get things done.

Incumbent Mayor Dolores “Dee” Parrish’s re-election came in the form of 239 write-in votes, after opponent Barbara Donovan launched a heated lawsuit to remove her name from the ballot.

Trustee John Mastauskas holds his hand up as he is sworn in. Photo by Kevin Redding

After her swearing in, Parrish led a very brief meeting that began with Three Village resident, and fellow write-in candidate, John Mastauskas being sworn in as a trustee.

Following the meeting, Mastauskas said that he’s proud and excited to stand by Parrish. Together, their main focus for the future will be the building of the community dock, which has been in high demand by the beach community’s residents, but ignored by past administrations,

Another issue to be dealt with is making sure that speed limits on the roads are controlled, by way of heightened resident awareness and enforcement.

“That’s been a big issue, for me especially,” Mastauskas said. “I watch people flying up and down my street daily. We’ve got kids playing, A lot of our driveways are on hills. Kids go chasing a ball down to the street.

“All it takes is one person driving a little bit too fast, looking at their phone, changing their radio station, and then that’s it. Then we got a big problem on our hands. We want to try to eliminate that [altogether].”

With a lot left to be done, Parrish is hopeful. “[Mastauskas] is a new energy in the Village,” she said. “Now it’s time to move forward and do what the residents want, and keep doing all the good things that we’ve accomplished the past two years.”

Brookhaven opposes rate hike from utility company

by Alex Petroski - July 6, 2016

0 424

Romaine_Bonner_PSEGrateincrease_041615_KARPw — Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine and Councilwoman Jane Bonner. File photo

Long Island residents who go to National Grid for their gas may be paying more come January 2017, but not if the Town of Brookhaven has anything to say about it.

The Brookhaven town board passed a resolution, with a unanimous vote June 30, opposing the company’s proposed rate increase that was announced in January. Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) sponsored the resolution, though all six board members asked to be added as co-sponsors prior to voting.

“This is an outrageous rate hike — it will impose a burden,” Romaine said in a phone interview last week. “We think it’s far too great.”

The increase would cost National Grid’s approximately 570,000 Long Island customers about $160 annually on top of what they already pay, according to a statement from the company in January. The increase would be about 12 percent.

Wendy Ladd, a spokeswoman for the company, responded to the resolution in an email Tuesday.

“We feel our proposals and the costs associated with them are essential to provide customers with safe and reliable gas service, enhance storm resiliency, expand the availability of gas service, help reduce methane, support our neediest customers, and to make the investments required to upgrade and modernize aging infrastructure and grow the system to meet the needs of a 21st century clean energy economy for years to come,” Ladd said.

Romaine said there is a precedent for the town intervening in battles over costs with utility companies. Last year, Brookhaven took on Long Island Power Authority in a similar case.

“LIPA now knows that we, if nothing else, will be watchdogs for the citizens of Brookhaven,” Romaine said.

National Grid New York’s President Ken Daly commented on the matter in January.

“National Grid has invested more than $4.5 billion over the past decade to modernize and build a safer and more reliable natural gas system for our customers. During this period of time, we have also maintained stable delivery rates for our customers,” he said in a statement. “Now, as we respond to the need to invest even more into our aging gas networks and prepare for the future needs of our customers, the investments required to provide this service have increased. The proposals will allow us to accelerate our gas main replacement program, improve critical customer service, and ensure that we have a modernized and technologically advanced natural gas system for our customers and the communities we serve, now and in the future.”

The Brookhaven town board is not against a rate hike altogether, though members said they would like to see it greatly reduced.

The resolution read in part: “the cost of living on Long Island is already astronomical partly due to high utility costs, placing a heavy burden on the residents of Long Island … residents are leaving Long Island in search of better opportunity and a lower cost of living.”

The resolution concluded with the board’s intention to “send a letter in opposition to the proposed rate hikes by National Grid and the Department of Public Service.”

National Grid’s January statement said the rate increases would allow them to significantly increase the gas main replacement program and improve technology in flood-prone areas, among other benefits.

The proposal will be reviewed by the New York State Department of Public Service before it is approved.

SBU’s Moll finds gene for airway cleaners

by Daniel Dunaief - July 6, 2016

0 3208

mollsblabw — Ute Moll in her lab at Stony Brook University. Photo by John Griffin

Some day, people may be able to breathe easier because of a cancer researcher.

No, Ute Moll doesn’t work on respiration; and, no, she doesn’t study the lungs. What Moll, research scientist Alice Nemajerova and several other collaborators did recently, however, was explain the role of an important gene, called p73, in the formation of multiciliated cells that remove pollutants like dust from the lungs.

Initially, scientists had studied a knockout mouse, which lacked the p73 gene, to see if the loss of this gene would cause mice to develop cancers, the way they did for p73’s well-studied cousin p53. Researchers were surprised that those mice without p73 didn’t get cancer, but found other problems in the development of their brains, which included abnormalities in the hippocampus.

While each of these mice had a respiratory problem, researchers originally suspected the breathing difficulties came from an immune response, said Moll, the vice chair for experimental pathology and professor of pathology at Stony Brook University.

A board-certified anatomical and clinical pathologist who does autopsies and trains residents at Stony Brook, Moll took a closer look and saw an important difference between these mice and the so-called wild type, which has an intact p73 gene.

Moll on a recent trip to Africa says hello to Sylvester the cheetah who is the animal ambassador in Zimbabwe. Photo from Moll

“Microscopic examinations of many types clearly showed that the multiciliated cells in the airways were severely defective,” she explained. “Instead of a lawn of dense long broom-like motile cilia on their cell surface which created a strong directional fluid flow across the windpipe surface, the [knockout] cells had far fewer cilia, and the few cilia present were mostly short stumps that lost 100 percent of their clearance function.”

This finding, which was published in the journal Genes & Development, could have implications for lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, which affects more than 330 million people around the world and is the third leading cause of death.

The discovery provides “the long-awaited explanation for the diverse phenotypes of the p73 knockout mice,” wrote Elsa Flores, a professor of molecular oncology at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, in a commentary of the work.

In an email, Flores said Moll is a “wonderful collaborator and colleague” whose “meticulous” work is “held in high regard.”

Carol Prives, Da Costa professor in biological sciences at Columbia University, suggested this was a “very significant finding.”

Moll and her scientific team went beyond showing that the loss of the p73 gene caused the defective or missing cilia. They took stem cells from the trachea, which can grow on a culture dish into a range of other cells. With the proper nutrients and signals, these stem cells can grow back into a fully differentiated respiratory epithelium.

The organotypic culture had the same defects as the knockout mice. The scientists then used a lentivirus to insert a copy of the functioning p73 gene. The cells in the culture developed a complete set of long, motile cilia.

“It’s a complete rescue experiment,” Moll said. “This closes the circle of proof that” p73 is responsible for the development of these structures that clean the lungs.

In addition to the lungs, mammals also develop these cilia in two other areas, in the brain and in the fallopian tubes.

There could be a range of p73 deficiencies and some of these could be indicative of vulnerability or susceptibility to lung-related problems that are connected to incomplete cilia. This could be particularly valuable to know in more polluted environments, where the concentration of dust or pollutants is high.

Moll plans to “find tissue banks from COPD patients” in which she might identify candidate alleles, or genes, that have a partial loss of function that would contribute to the reduction in the cilia cells.

While Moll will continue to work on respiration and p73 in mice, she described her broader research goals as “gene-centric,” in which she studies the entire p53 family, which includes p53, p63 and p73.

Colleagues suggested that she has made important and unexpected discoveries with p53.

“She was among the first to show that in some pathological states, p53 is sequestered in the cytoplasm rather than in the nucleus,” Prives, who has known Moll for 25 years, explained in an email. “This led to her original and very unexpected discovery that p53 associates with mitochondria and plays a direct role in mitochondrial cell death. She was very courageous in that regard since the common view was that p53 works only in the nucleus.”

Moll was raised in Germany and earned her undergraduate and medical degrees in Ulm, the same town where Albert Einstein grew up. She lives in Setauket with her husband, Martin Rocek, a professor of theoretical physics at SBU. The couple has two sons, 26-year-old Thomas, who is involved in reforestation in Peru, and 29-year-old Julian, a documentary filmmaker focusing on environmental themes.

Moll is also focused on the environment.“If humankind doesn’t wake up soon, we are going to saw off the branch we’re sitting on,” she warns. One of Moll’s pet peeves is car idling. She walks up to the windows of people sitting in idling cars and asks if they could turn off the engine.

As for her work with p73, she feels as if she is “just at the beginning. This is a rich field.”

Prev 1...650651652...715 Next

Page 651 of 715