09 Oct Sen. Tammy Baldwin takes in ‘locally sourced science’ at Morgridge Institute
Forward-thinking science and childhood memories came full circle on Wednesday for U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who visited a lab at the Morgridge Institute for Research that is carrying on the inspired legacy of her grandfather, David E. Green.
Baldwin, who was raised by her grandparents in Madison, spent many days visiting her grandfather’s lab just a few blocks away from the Morgridge Institute, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Institute. Green was recruited from Columbia University in 1948 to be the original director of the Enzyme Institute and he led the program through the golden years of metabolism science, where one fundamental discovery after another was coming out of UW-Madison.
Commonly referred to as the “chemistry of life,” metabolism is the process by which the body uses food and oxygen to produce the energy and chemicals needed for essential functions and processes that constitute life. The work of Green’s team in the 50s and 60s produced seminal discoveries about the function of the mitochondria and the molecule coenzyme Q, both essential players in healthy metabolism.
Today, metabolism research at UW-Madison is stronger than ever, and Baldwin took the opportunity to tour the lab of one of her grandfather’s scientific successors: Dave Pagliarini, a Morgridge metabolism investigator and UW-Madison professor of biochemistry.