Dennis Bazylinski, Magnetotactic Bacteria, and Mud

The following biographical account of Dennis A. Bazylinski, Professor and Director of the School of Life Sciences, appeared in the article “Biomineralization and assembly of the bacterial magnetosome chain,” by Dennis A. Bazylinski and Dirk Schüler. The article was published in Microbe 4:124-130 in March 2009. Microbe is the news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Bazylinski: Early in his Career Found Magnetic Appeal in a Mud Drop

by Marlene Cimons

Dennis A. Bazylinski traces his keenest scientific interests to an early encounter with a drop of mud. In 1980, he met with microbiologist Richard P. Blakemore at the University of New Hampshire, who put a dollop of mud under a microscope and invited Bazylinski to scan it. Seeing how the bacteria in that sample behaved, “I was literally stunned, and made my decision to join his lab within 24 hours,” he says. “During my two postdocs, I did other things, but I knew I would return to studying magnetotactic bacteria—which I did and continue to do.”

Bazylinski, Director and Associate Professor at the University of Nevada School of Life Sciences in Las Vegas, continues to examine magnetosomes in bacteria at the genetic and molecular levels. “We are also interested in how magnetosomes evolved, how they function in the cell, and how they interact with other physiological features of the cell--particularly in marine species,” he says.

Bazylinski, 55, who is divorced and has two children in college, was born in Medford, Mass., near Boston. His late father was a laborer; his mother, 80, still works selling men’s wear. He is the oldest of four, and the only one of his immediate family interested in science. One sister works as a teacher’s aide, the other as an administrative assistant. His brother teaches high school history.

Bazylinski realized early that he would become a scientist. “Before I went to school I was always after insects, later it was reptiles and amphibians,” he says. “I was always out hunting something. Somehow I backtracked and got into bacteria.” He earned his B.S. and M.S., both in Biology, at Northeastern University in Boston in 1976 and 1980, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of New Hampshire in 1984.

The late Galen Jones, who chaired the Microbiology Department at the University of New Hampshire, matched him with Blakemore, and also helped Bazylinski obtain a postdoctoral position with Holger Jannasch at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “My experience in Holger’s lab, and getting to know and interact with all the great microbiologists at Woods Hole, changed everything for me,” he says. “Because of that experience I have been on the sub Alvin several times.”

While working at Woods Hole during the late 1980s, Bazylinski isolated two marine strains of magnetotactic bacteria, which he describes as a defining moment in his career. “It put me back in the game,” he says. “It was important at the time because there were very few pure cultures of magnetotactic bacteria around to work with.”

“There now are definitely a few more pure cultures, but in reality there could still be improvement on this,” he continues. “We still see so many different types in the environment but still can’t isolate them. We have been able ‘to genome’ one of the bugs I isolated, and have been able to sequence the magnetosome genes in the other. One of the important points of having unrelated species of magnetotactic bacteria isolated is that we can compare the magnetosome genes and the organization of those genes within their genomes.”

Bazylinski spent 11 years in the Department of Microbiology at Iowa State University, before moving to Las Vegas. “I needed a change,” he says. As Director of the School of Life Sciences, “I get to use a new skill set dealing much more with people than with bacteria,” he says. “It’s a very challenging job at the moment with budget cuts, but I get treated very well at the University Nevada Las Vegas, and I think people here appreciate my efforts in trying to make it a better place for research.”

While Bazylinski loves New England, “you need to go where the jobs are,” he says, adding that he appreciates Nevada for its natural resources. “One of my major hobbies is hiking, and that is wonderful here, as we are surrounded by mountains,” he says. He also is a runner and musician. “I play electric bass and currently own six of them. And they all get played. I haven’t found a band here yet, but I am looking.”

Marlene Cimons is a freelance writer in Bethesda, Maryland.