Alex Travis, VMD, PhD
- What aspect of your research are you most excited about right now?
- Our studies of sperm capacitation—the process by which sperm become able to fertilize an egg—are going very well. We have some really cool findings on how changes in membrane lipids like cholesterol and GM1 regulate calcium flux and membrane fusion in acrosome exocytosis. To do this, we’ve created a mouse model that lets us look at changes in calcium in the acrosome in live cells in real time. Capacitation, acrosome exocytosis, and binding and fusing with the egg are essential for the very first step of how life continues from one generation to the next, and we’re just beginning to understand how they work.
- What inspired you to study reproduction, in general?
- From the time I was 5 and watching Wild Kingdom on TV, I have been passionately interested in conserving wildlife species. As more and more species become critically endangered, we must be able to manage their reproduction more intensively. I knew I wanted to become a veterinarian so I could understand these species, but it was through working in the labs of Roger Short and Marilyn Renfree in Australia for a year that I came to understand how little we know about reproduction, and that I could have the most impact by doing basic science.
- When you’re not doing research, what are your hobbies or non-work-related interests?
- I really enjoy being a dad—taking our kids to their hockey games, watching them grow and develop their interests. Now that they are older, I have a bit more time for me, and I’ve gotten back into my own hobbies of running and bird-watching.
- What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve received over your research career?
- One of the best bits of advice is that it is easy to talk yourself out of doing something, thinking of all the ways that it could fail. The advice was simply “Just do the experiment. See what happens.” Don’t overthink. This clearly applies to life outside the lab as well!
- Ideally, how do you envision your research contributing to the broader field of reproduction (be it societal, ecological, etc.)?
- Figuring out how sperm work lets us apply that knowledge for different purposes—whether doing IVF in dogs, or creating a diagnostic test that measures the actual fertility of a man, something traditional semen analysis fails to do. It has been incredibly rewarding to have our work help people who are suffering from difficulty in conceiving. I’d love for our work to lead to new contraceptive approaches in people and other species, and I’d also like some of it to have real impact in saving a species from extinction.
