William Hanna, Ph.D.

My research career began while I was an undergraduate biology major at Colby College. While at Colby, I participated in a joint project with the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. The project's goal was to develop a method for successfully cryopreserving mouse sperm, so that rare genotypes could be easily saved for future study. Although my involvement in the project was limited, it sparked my interest in reproductive and developmental biology, and it gave me an appreciation for the difficulty inherent in studying mammalian gametes. Following graduation from Colby, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in reproductive biology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. My project was supervised by Dr. William Wright, who has had a longstanding interest in the role of cell-cell interactions in mammalian sperm function. I studied how mouse sperm interact with the zona pellucida, the extracellular matrix that surrounds the egg. Binding of a sperm to the zona pellucida is the first critical step in fertilization. While it is widely accepted that this binding is a protein-carbohydrate interaction, the identities of the carbohydrate structure on the zona pellucida and its cognate receptor on the sperm remains unresolved. In my doctoral work, I tested sperm with neoglycoproteins to mimic the authentic carbohydrate ligands on the zona pellucida. My data were consistent with our hypothesis that the intrinsic carbohydrates on the zona pellucida have a structure that contains or resembles a Lewis X structure.

Following my doctoral work, I spent time as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Genetics at Dartmouth Medical School. While at Dartmouth, I studied the heterochronic gene pathway in C. elegans development. The goal of the project was to identify novel proteins involved in the pathway via an RNAi-by-feeding screen.

Massasoit is participating in a National Science Foundation grant with Stonehill College. One aim of this grant is to provide the experience of scientific research to Massasoit students interested in pursuing a bachelor's degree in biology or chemistry. In the summer of 2007, I served as a faculty research advisor to Mark Godek (MCC '07, Stonehill '10) and John Medeiros (MCC '08, '10). We spent the summer in the laboratory of Dr. Craig Almeida studying rates of homologous recombination in wild-type and mutant strains of C. elegans. Massasoit's collaboration with Stonehill is expected to continue through the summer of 2009. Students who are interested in participating in research in either biology or chemistry should contact either Rachel Hirst (MCC, Biology Department) or Dr. Kendra Twomey (MCC, Physical Sciences Department).

At Massasoit, I teach both semesters of our majors-level, introductory sequence (Biological Principles I and Biological Principles II), both semesters of Anatomy and Physiology, and Human Genetics. Biological Principles is a rigorous introduction to cell and molecular biology. The main goal of the course is to provide students with a strong foundation in the principles that are common to all living organisms. Teaching this course is always a rewarding experience, as I get to continually update it with the most timely findings in the field, so students can experience biology as it happens and appreciate its vitality. Ideally, students will understand how events at the biochemical and molecular level influence both structure and function at the cellular level.

Biological Principles II serves as the continuation of the topics introduced in Biological Principles I. In this course, students are exposed to the role of natural selection in shaping the diverse forms of life on earth, from their ancient origins to the present day. The three main themes that are explored in this course are evolution, diversity, and ecology. Both Biological Principles I and II constitute a full-year, transferable, majors-level introduction to general biology, and they are recommended for students continuing in a science-related field at a transfer institution.

Anatomy and Physiology is a 200-level biology course sequence designed for students who are interested in enrolling in a healthcare or sports physiology program at Massasoit or elsewhere. I teach Anatomy and Physiology as a natural expansion of the topics covered in Biological Principles. Therefore, it is important that my students have a solid base of biological knowledge on which to build. Like most upper-level biology courses at the college level, the laboratory experience is integral part of learning anatomy and physiology. As a result, students are rigorously tested on both the lecture and the laboratory components of the course, ensuring that they have mastered both the theoretical and practical elements of the material.