Queer Scientist Spotlight: Ben Barres

I remember when I first heard about Ben Barres. It was October 2017, and I was at a small scientific conference on specialized types of cells in the nervous system (brain, spinal cord, and nerves) called glia. I was there to share some of my research about spinal cord development. I was beginning to think about science as a possible career and trying to fit in with this crowd of academics. My egg hadn’t cracked yet and wouldn’t for two more years.

And then the strangest thing happened: I started hearing whispers about a famous scientist near the end of his life. Eventually, I pieced together that the whispers were about Ben Barres. My advisor said he was the Stanford scientist who first demonstrated functions for glia. He also said was also a trans man. Back then, I had never met an openly trans person before - and I certainly hadn’t heard of any openly trans scientists.

After I moved to Stanford for grad school, I instinctively reached for his posthumous The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist1. By this time, I was trying to figure out what my transition would look like. I remember relating painfully to his stories of dysphoria. Yet, his joy provided comfort that my goals were possible. So let’s celebrate Ben Barres by exploring his life, science, and advocacy.

Ben Barres was born in 1954 in West Orange, New Jersey. His nuclear family had rigid gender roles with his father as a salesman and his mother raising the children. He became aware of his dysphoria at age three, preferring masculine toys and wanting to join the Boy Scouts. In high school, he presented as a tomboy which led to bullying and harassment from his peers. However, he was unable to express his dysphoria at this time. At age 17, he discovered that he had been born with Müllerian agenesis. In his case, internal reproductive organs (except for ovaries) did not form during development.2

As a teen, Barres gained exposure to science through programs at Rutgers, Phillips Andover Academy, and Columbia. He took a summer job at Bell Labs which gave him his first exposure to a research environment. He was hooked.

A first-generation college student, he did his undergrad at MIT and medical school at Dartmouth, specializing in neurology. In his education and residency, Barres was the target of intense sexism as someone femme presenting. He struggled to find mentors in the nearly all-male faculties - particularly given their sexist postures toward the newly co-ed student body.3

In 1983, Barres began his Ph.D. work at Harvard. To pay his loans from his undergrad and medical training, he moonlighted as a neurologist during his first two years of grad school. Eventually, his mentor (David Corey) noticed his exhaustion and more than doubled his salary so that Barres could quit moonlighting. After earning his Ph.D., he briefly worked in England with Martin Raff at University College London as a postdoc (continued training/research after the completion of a Ph.D.).

In 1993, Ben Barres was hired as an Assistant Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University. A few years into his professorship, he read an article about trans activist Jamison Green in the San Francisco Chronicle:

From this moment, Barres began working toward a gender transition which he found “irresistible.” And in December 1997, he began his social transition with an email to his colleagues explaining his dysphoria. He includes this email in his autobiography, but I am choosing not to quote from it as it contains overarching themes of transmedicalism. He also makes an offhand comment distancing himself from negative stereotypes of transfemininity. (None of us are perfect!)

After coming out, Barres was affirmed by his colleagues. Looking back at his career, he couldn’t identify “a single adverse thing” that happened due to transphobia. I wish this experience was more common. In fact, it isn’t my experience or the experience of any trans scientist that I have met so far.

In 2013, he became the first openly transgender scientist elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The Academy, however, refused to mention this in their press release because they were concerned about backlash from “religious people.” Barres was upset by this and made sure that news organizations included his trans identity in their reporting.

Barres didn’t experience sexual attraction and didn’t date much, instead putting his energy into his science. In 2016, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Over the next year and a half, he wrote his autobiography. In December 2017 (two months after my Traverse City conference), he passed away, receiving tributes from across the world of science for his prominent intellectual contributions and advocacy.

Ben Barres’ intellectual contributions are in understanding roles for cells called glia. Before we dive in, we should go over a little bit of neuroscience.

Your nervous system (brain, spinal cord, and nerves) send information using bursts of electrical signals (called action potentials). The cells that are responsible for these electrical signals are called neurons. Neurons use the electrical signals coordinate communication at specialized junctions between neurons called synapses. The synapse is where chemical neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine work.

When Ben Barres began his career, most scientists still assumed that glia had negligible functions in the brain. Now, we now that there are many different types of glia, each with specific functions. Today, let’s focus on three types that are present in your brain and spinal cord: astrocytes, microglia, and oligodendrocytes.

Astrocytes are like the Swiss Army knife of your brain. Named for their star-like shape, astrocytes have many functions.The Barres lab was growing neurons in a dish (a common lab technique that uses dissected brains from developing mice) and were surprised that they couldn’t detect electrical signals. However, that changed when they added astrocytes to the dish. As it turns out, astrocytes help neurons make synapses. And without astrocytes or synapses, the neurons in the dish were not able transmit their action potentials. And that’s just one of the many tools in the astrocyte repertoire!

Microglia are the hungry hungry hippos. Microglia are constantly looking for for pathogens (like bacteria or viruses) to eat - literally. In a process called phagocytosis (Greek for “cell eating”), microglia surround a pathogen and absorb it in order to break down the potential danger. The Barres lab wondered if microglia could also be eating synapses because many synapses are typically removed during development. So, they took images of microglia in the brains of newborn mice. In these images, they saw leftover bits of synapses that the microglia had eaten. It’s like the microglia needed a toothpick!

Oligodendrocytes are like the oven mitts for neurons. These cells produce insulation (called myelin) that surrounds neurons to ensure that electrical signals are transmitted quickly. Many neurological conditions (such as multiple sclerosis) are related to the loss of myelin. Given the clinical importance, the Barres lab was interested in understanding how myelin grows around an neuron. So, they took movies! Surprisingly, the movies showed that all the myelin produced by an oligodendrocyte is generated within just a few hours. Oligodendrocytes can live for many years, but they do their most important work all at once. These oven mitts are stretched pretty thin ;;;

As you can see, glia have many important functions! These vignettes are just some of the insights from Ben Barres and his lab’s work. These discoveries led to new biological questions that are a major part of neuroscience research today. Yet, they are not the only contributions that Ben Barres left the world of science.

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Ben Barres used his status as a premier scientist to combat sexism in science. He raised awareness of rampant sexual harassment and suggested reforms to the tenure process. (Tenure is often a gatekeeping mechanism that maintains a predominately white and male faculty pool.) You can hear him make these cases in front of an audience at the Broad Institute in 2017.

Barres also noticed that conferences often featured all-male speakers. This was true of the one I attended in Traverse City. More recently this has been given the name “manel” - a portmanteau of “man” and “panel.” Whenever Barres was invited to give a presentation, he would first clarify the gender balance in the event’s invited speakers. If the speakers were predominately men, he would decline the invitation, often in ~vibrant~ language:

Yet, his highest profile confrontation of sexism in science came in July 2006 in the journal Nature. The previous year, Larry Summers (then-president of Harvard) suggested that discrepancies between men’s and women’s scientific careers are due to women’s lower aptitude for science. Summers was echoed by Harvard professor (and noted transphobe) Stephen Pinker and University of Cambridge professor Peter Lawrence. Barres takes on these overt sexists by name in a now famous essay in Nature titled “Does gender matter?” Using at math test scores from ages 4-18, Barres demonstrates the absence of a gender gap in aptitude. Further, he shows that gender gaps in academic science appear only after peer review. Therefore, differences in perceived ability are the result of subjective social forces (aka sexism) from peer review. Iconic.

However, Barres considered his greatest contributions to be the scientists that trained in his lab. He reflected on the privilege of mentorship in his autobiography:

And you may have even heard of at least one of his mentees: neuroscientist, podcaster, and medical supplement salesman Andrew Huberman. In fact, Huberman wrote Barres’ obituary in Nature and deadnamed him within the first 4 words. Since then, he has been a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience hosted by noted transphobe Joe Rogan ;;;

Instead of that sour note, I want to leave you with a triumphant and joyful quote from Barres reflecting on his life and career: