A Life in Research—Dr. Robert Setterquist

When Bob Setterquist was only ten, his father, a research chemist at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware, taught him to inject a sample into one of the company’s early gas chromatographers. Experiences like this, along with a basement and garage “set up very much like a lab, with work benches, tools, and equipment everywhere,” provided him with a love for science that eventually led him to Ambion. Today Dr. Setterquist manages Expression Analysis Systems, an R&D team that develops MessageAmp™ Kits for measuring RNA using microarray technology (see A More Efficient Way to Amplify and Biotin Label RNA for Microarray Analysis).

After receiving a master’s degree from the Department of Anaerobic Microbiology at Virginia Tech, Dr. Setterquist joined George Fox’s biochemistry lab at the University of Houston, where he received his Ph.D. One of the first RNA scientists and a co-discoverer of the Archaea division of bacteria, Dr. Fox and his team developed an evolutionary map of ribosomal RNA, providing the world with a molecular tree of life.

Hoping To Get Paid
Arriving in Austin in 1999, Dr. Setterquist found himself at a small start-up company where “scientists had to figure out which products could be made and made well—and which products would sell well. Otherwise we didn’t get paid.” He found this to be valuable experience, which taught him to deal with “new challenges outside my scientific training. I had to learn how to envision a product, get my hands around the development effort, write grants to help finance the work, and even help the marketing and sales team sell the product. This experience was unique to the early days at Ambion.”

Change As Constant
When asked what advice he would give fledgling scientists, Dr. Setterquist, now a Senior Manager, Scientist at Ambion, an Applied Biosystems business, replies without hesitation: “Be willing to take on change. Many students believe that they will be studying their current project for the rest of their career. Changing areas of study usually turns out to be very rewarding. And although it is foreign to many young researchers, they should be ready to work in teams. Several minds focused on a project usually produce better solutions. It’s not as lonely, and it’s more fun.”

Dream Project—Almost a Reality
Dr. Setterquist used to dream of creating a universal RNA/DNA detection system capable of analyzing every bit of nucleic acid in a sample. His dream is now close to realization with the advent of the Applied Biosystems SOLiD™ System for high throughput discovery. “We are getting much closer to this ideal than most of the world realizes,” he says. “I might be biased, but I am really excited about the new applications and implications for next-generation sequencing. The next frontier is a merger between computational methods and the analytical chemistry of a cell. Converting biomolecular identities and concentrations into a digital image of ever higher resolution is the story we are watching unfold.”

Selected Bibliography
1. Shippy R, Fulmer-Smentek S, Jensen RV, Jones WD, Wolber PK, Johnson CD, Pine PS, Boysen C, Guo X, Chudin E, Sun YA, Willey JC, Thierry-Mieg J, Thierry-Mieg D, Setterquist RA, Wilson M, Lucas AB, Novoradovskaya N, Papallo A, Turpaz Y, Baker SC, Warrington JA, Shi L, Herman D (2006) Using RNA sample titrations to assess microarray platform performance and normalization techniques. Nat Biotechnol 24(9):1123-1131.

2. D’Souza LM, Larios-Sanz M, Setterquist RA, Willson RC, Fox GE (2003) Small RNA sequences are readily stabilized by inclusion in a carrier rRNA. Biotechnol Prog 19(3):734-738.

3. Setterquist RA, Smith GK, Jones R, Fox GE (1996) Diagnostic probes targeting the major sperm protein gene that may be useful in the molecular identification of nematodes. J Nematol 28(4 Suppl):414-421.

4. Setterquist RA, Smith GK, Oakley TH, Lee YH, Fox GE (1996) Sequence, overproduction and purification of Vibrio proteolyticus ribosomal protein L18 for in vitro and in vivo studies. Gene 183(1-2):237-242.

5. Setterquist RA, Smith GK (1996) Ready to use agarose encapsulated PCR reagents. Nucleic Acids Res 24(8):1580-1581.

6. Setterquist R, Brigle KE, Beynon J, Cannon M, Ally A, Cannon F, Dean DR (1988) Nucleotide sequence of the nifE and nifN genes from Klebsiella pneumoniae. Nucleic Acids Res 16(11):5215