Today, Dr. Ward, a long-time member of SBS, brings this sense of excitement—and plenty of hands-on laboratory exercises, lectures, and demonstrations— to his signature industry-oriented course, Protein Purification: Isolation, Analysis, and Characterization of GFP (www.rci.rutgers.edu/~meton/protein.html), and to the other academic and industry courses taught at the Center for Research and Education in Bioluminescence and Biotechnology (CREBB). Dr. Ward, who is Director of CREBB and Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Rutgers University's Cook College, notes that more than 1100 scientists from around the world have taken the five-and-one-half-day course since its inception more than 10 years ago.

"What I teach is what I do in the research lab, only tailored to the experience level and analytical capabilities of the registrants," he explains. "A special feature of the course is that all laboratory work is performed on the same starting sample (Aequorea GFP or recombinant GFP), which is then purified from an exceedingly crude form—starting with tissue or bacterial cell extraction—to near homogeneity, as judged by high performance liquid chromatography, SDS gel electrophoresis, isoelectric focusing, and western blotting. This provides a continuity of purpose, and allows us to integrate dozens of preparative and analytical protein techniques into our work."

His lab is located in Rutgers' Lipman Hall, home of the Biochemistry and Microbiology department and, he notes, "descendent department of Nobel Prize winning soil microbiologist Selman Waxman, the discoverer of streptomycin." His group has an 800 sq. ft. main research lab, and two smaller labs that together total 400 sq. ft. They also have a new 1700 sq. ft. teaching suite that opened in October, 2002. One side of the suite is a lecture room that seats about 20 people and the other side is the teaching lab, which also accommodates about 20 people (see the sidebar for a listing of the equipment used in his classes).

Entrepreneurial Efforts

With the launch and implementation of the Protein Purification course, Dr. Ward's group had a taste of entrepreneurial success, he says, "and we wanted more of the same." Several applications show promise so far:

• High throughput screening of drug-mediated cellular responses using GFP as an intracellular indicator of gene induction. "Our invention [patent pending] was presented in a platform session at SBS' 2001 meeting in Baltimore. We claim as much as a 1,000,000,000,000-fold [trillion-fold] enhancement of fluorimetric signal relative to a standard, computer-interfaced fluorimetric plate reader." This project has not gone beyond the inquiry stage as yet.



• GFP-based calibration beads (patent pending) for determining accurately how much GFP is being expressed in tissues or cells, as measured by fluorescence microscopy, fluorescence activated cell sorting, and fluorimetric plate reading. "This project is moving," he says, "and we have an early agreement with a small company to work with us."



• Biosynthesis of coelenterazine (coelenterate luciferin) for the purpose of creating self-luminescent sentry plants for large-scale agricultural monitoring of plant stress. A patent was issued on this invention several years ago, but it has not yet moved beyond the inquiry stage.

Although his group's ability to move forward with a commercial product has been limited to date, Dr. Ward seems able, nonetheless, to remain optimistic and generate high levels of verve, enthusiasm, and creativity. He says of his teaching, "bioluminescence is intrinsically fascinating, and so it is very easy to motivate students with things that glow." No doubt "things that glow" continue to motivate him, as well.

For more information about CREBB, contact Dr. William Ward at:

Phone: +1 (732) 932-9763 ext. 216
e-mail: crebb@rci.rutgers.edu; or visit
http://aesop.rutgers.edu/~crebb/.