An Accidental Scholar of Physiology and Biophysics Retires
After spending 50 years studying how things work in living organisms, Dr. Karl Magleby sees continuing discoveries leading to a bright future.
Karl Magleby, Ph.D., has spent five decades exploring how activity in tiny biological structures can have a large impact on human health.
The professor and former chair of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has devoted his career to searching for clues to medical mysteries that tiny molecular and cellular structures can provide. He stepped down from that role in 2022 after 30 years and has now closed his lab and recently retired. But he will continue working with a reduced number of lectures and research collaborations.
During Dr. Magleby’s leadership, the department made groundbreaking discoveries over a wide range of topics that are important for understanding human health and disease. His scholarship since joining the medical school faculty as an assistant professor in 1971 includes 120 refereed journal articles, book chapters, commentaries and reviews, plus more than 100 abstracts. Some of his major research contributions include the discovery of four different types of ion channels and developing models that describe short-term memory in synaptic transmission. Ion channels are key proteins involved in the electrical activity of brain, nerve and muscle, and synaptic transmission is the process by which nerve cells talk to each other in the brain and to muscle cells.
Reflecting the importance of this work, he:
• Received the Kenneth S. Cole Award from the Biophysical Society for contributions to Membrane Biophysics (2009)
• Received the Provost’s Award for Scholarly Activity from the University of Miami (2010)
• Was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020) for notable contributions to ion channel biophysics as the molecular basis of synaptic transmission and by pioneering electrophysiological and computational approaches that advanced the field.
In addition to research, teaching has always played an important role in Dr. Magleby’s academic life. He has taught more than 5,000 medical students in physiology courses at the Miller School over the past 50 years, receiving eight prestigious medical teaching awards. He has also served as mentor for 14 graduate students and 21 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom later became faculty themselves.
In this interview, Dr. Magleby discusses how having parents who were raised on small farms facilitated his research career, how building model airplanes got him immediate admission to graduate school, how collaborative research can facilitate discovery and why basic science research is more important than ever.
What was your pathway to a career in biomedical research?
Both of my parents were raised on small farms. When not in school, they worked most every daylight hour on the farm and then studied long into the evening. They took these working traits with them, passing them on to me and my siblings as we were growing up in a small urban community, as my father did not become a farmer, but a professor of sociology at the University of Utah, where I also received my undergraduate degree. I still remember him typing on a heavy manual typewriter on the kitchen table far into most nights, shaking the entire house it seemed. My father’s career then served as a role model for my life in academia.
But that was not my original intent. My plan on entering college was to become an aeronautical engineer. In high school, I designed and built a large, four-engine radio-controlled model airplane that drew considerable attention at the National Science Fair in Kansas City in 1961, eliciting an article about my model airplane in a national model aviation magazine published after the fair. Years later, when applying to graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle, I included a copy of the published article and was immediately accepted in mid-year.
Partway through my undergraduate engineering degree, however, I developed an interest in biology and medicine, so I changed majors to molecular biology, which I later found lacked the quantitative rigor that I craved. An accidental discovery of a textbook of physiology and biophysics in a bookstore as I neared graduation revealed that this joint discipline combined the mathematical rigor of physics and engineering with the mysteries of the life sciences. Consequently, I pursued a doctoral degree in physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The accidental discovery of that textbook led me to the ideal field of study for my abilities and interests, and it’s where I’ve been working ever since.
Scientists make many discoveries. It’s what we do. Most are scientific steppingstones along a pathway of discovery, until a significant new insight is obtained. After a brief feeling of accomplishment, the process is started anew and repeated over and over during one’s scientific career.
Dr. Karl Magleby
Why is it an ideal field for you?
The discipline of physiology and biophysics opens the entire body for study, as it investigates how the various organs and their cellular and molecular parts work. We initially had to build our own equipment to measure the very small voltages and currents generated by ion channels and synapses. The experiments require computer control with extensive data analysis using our own programs to reveal underlying mechanisms. For one interested in biophysics, it doesn’t get any better than this. To place early biophysics in perspective, the small computer I used to control my experiments in graduate school was similar to the small computer used on Apollo 11 for the first moon landing in 1969, the year before I graduated.
The approach to tackling disease is to first determine normal function. Then by comparing normal function with diseased function, it is possible to determine what’s broken, giving insight toward fixing the problem. It’s not too different from fixing a car, but seriously more complicated.
But what you are studying is much smaller than a car. It’s microscopic.
Yes, ion channels have molecular dimensions. They are small proteins that control electrical activity in nerve and muscle cells. They do this by opening and closing. They are little machines, and one needs to know how they work to determine if they are normal or broken. Many pharmaceutical agents alter their opening and closing to treat disease. We also study how nerve cells talk with each other and muscle cells at microscopic junctions called synapses, which also use ion channels in key steps of the process. To study the activity of the channels and synapses, we measure currents as small as one millionth of one millionth of an ampere and voltages thousands of times smaller than those of tiny hearing aid batteries.
It’s people working together that allows science to advance so quickly. What we have accomplished has only been possible because we have built on the discoveries of others.
Dr. Karl Magleby
Your lab has made some important discoveries. What is that process?
We use three types of discovery processes. The first is serendipitous — discoveries made by chance. We are always alert for new, unexpected observations outside of currently known knowledge. Because these observations are outside of known knowledge, they are new discoveries. Serendipity led to our discovery of two new types of ion channels and several new processes involved in synaptic transmission.
In a second type of discovery process, we anticipate a specific discovery from previous knowledge and then design experiments to directly look for it. This is how we discovered two additional classes of ion channels and additional processes involved in the workings of ion channels and synaptic transmission. The third type of discovery process uses computer modeling to discover how ion channels and synaptic transmission work.
Scientists make many discoveries. It’s what we do. Most are scientific steppingstones along a pathway of discovery, until a significant new insight is obtained. After a brief feeling of accomplishment, the process is started anew and repeated over and over during one’s scientific career.
What role does team science play?
It’s people working together that allows science to advance so quickly. What we have accomplished has only been possible because we have built on the discoveries of others.
Scientific input and collaborations with faculty, staff scientists, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and research staff in the department, Miller School and national and international institutions has been essential. It is the staff scientists, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and research staff who perform the bulk of the work.
What do past discoveries mean for the future?
Scientific knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate as new knowledge builds upon the rapidly expanding past knowledge. The quickest path to breakthrough medical science often involves developing new methods and approaches to discover and manipulate previously unknown biological processes. The new methods and approaches then serve as tools to develop new treatments and cures. I am forever amazed at the power of science to answer seemingly intractable questions. The future is bright.
Tags: Department of Physiology & Biophysics, Dr. Karl Magleby, mentoring