NIH Awards $2.3M to Maine Scientist to Study Cell’s “Protein Factory”

Press Release

NIH Awards $2.3M to Maine Scientist to Study Cell's "Protein Factory"

MDI Bio Lab's Emily Spaulding, Ph.D., does fundamental research on cellular organization with implications for aging and disease

March 18, 2026

Bar Harbor, Maine - Emily Spaulding, Ph.D., a Maine native and Assistant Professor at the MDI Biological Laboratory, has received a $2.3 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how cells organize one of their most active internal structures - the nucleolus - and what happens when that organization breaks down.

The award, from the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will expand Spaulding's research on this small structure inside the cell nucleus that builds ribosomes - the molecular machines that cells use to make proteins. Because proteins carry out most of the work in living cells, from building tissues to controlling chemical reactions, the nucleolus plays a central role in cellular health.

"This is a major validation of the creativity and rigor of Dr. Spaulding's science," said Hermann Haller, M.D., president of MDI Biological Laboratory. "The award strengthens both her laboratory and the institution while advancing fundamental discoveries about how cells organize themselves - knowledge that could ultimately help scientists better understand disorders in which those systems break down, including ALS, Alzheimer's disease and cancer."

Scientists have long known that the nucleolus has a highly organiized internal architecture that is often disrupted in diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders and cancers. What remains less clear is how that organization arises inside living cells - and why it matters.

That question is at the center of Spaulding's research.

A turning point came two years ago when Spaulding and her mentor, MDI Bio Lab Associate Professor Dustin Updike, Ph.D., began using the tiny, transparent roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans to study the nucleolus in a living animal. The team identified a previously unrecognized counterpart of the human nucleolar protein Nucleolin, which they named NUCL-1.

"We needed a model where the nucleolus could be studied inside a living animal to make sure what was learned from experiments in isolated cells or test tubes actually reflects biology in the context of a living organism," Spaulding said.

"That is extremely difficult or impossible in most systems, including humans and mice," she added. "C. elegans is easy to grow and manipulate, and it's transparent, which allows us to look inside its cells with powerful microscopes while the animal is alive and interacting with its environment."

The work also produced an unexpected finding: when one region of the NUCL-1 protein was removed, the nucleolus lost some of its characteristic internal organization, yet the worms remained healthy and fertile. The result challenged a long-standing assumption that precise nucleolar organization is always required for normal cell function.

Spaulding continued to explore that finding as she established her laboratory at MDI Bio Lab, with support from the Maine INBRE program, which helps expand biomedical research capacity in rural states by supporting early-career scientists, undergraduate research experiences and shared infrastructure.

Now, the new NIH grant will allow her lab to take the next step: uncovering how nucleolar organization varies across different tissues and what that means for human disease. Over the next five years, the team will study neurons, muscle, intestine and other tissues in C. elegans to determine whether some cell types depend more than others on precise nucleolar structure.

Known as a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA), the grant provides stable, long-term support and flexibility to pursue important questions as discoveries unfold.

For MDI Biological Laboratory, the award underscores growing national recognition of research conducted in Bar Harbor and the role of Maine-based science in advancing fundamental biomedical discovery. It also affirms the Lab's decision to appoint Spaulding to the George Wojtech Chair in Neurobiology - the institution's first endowed faculty position.

This research program has been supported by an award from the National Institute of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, award number P20GM103423

The new MIRA award number is 1R35GM162099-01