Whether Plumbers or Ph.D.'s, Harry Dailey Speaks Their Language

The son of a Depression-era high school dropout, microbiologist Harry Dailey is a self-proclaimed “blue-collar sort of person.” He worked as a hospital orderly and nursing home aide–-an unforgettable experience—to pay his way through college. One summer, two residents died and Dailey was assigned to get them ready for the undertaker.

“It just helps you to understand some aspects of life and people a little bit differently,” Dailey said. “It makes you realize that the world is a lot more than your little place.”

Dailey went on to earn a doctorate in microbiology from the University of California–Los Angeles. Today, Dailey is a professor of microbiology and biochemistry & molecular biology and director of University of Georgia Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute. 

Despite his accomplishments and honors, Dailey is a down-to-earth guy who relates equally well to Ph.D.’s and plumbers. 

In the laboratory, Dailey focuses on how cells manufacture heme, an essential part of the oxygen-carrying blood protein hemoglobin.  Several enzymes, molecules that facilitate the making and breaking of chemical bonds, work together to make heme.  If these enzymes are defective, toxic levels of chemicals build up in the body and cause one of several diseases known as porphyrias. 

People with these disorders suffer a range of problems ranging from seizures to abdominal pain.  King George III’s episodes of madness are attributed to one type of porphyria, while another form is dubbed “vampire syndrome” because it causes a painful sensitivity to sunlight.

Since Dailey is a researcher and not a physician, he can’t actually treat patients with porphyria. But these people are never far from his mind.

A little more than 15 years ago, Dailey and his team determined the mutation that causes a particular type of the disease, variegate porphyria, using a DNA sample taken from a young girl in South Africa and shipped to his lab in Athens.  After the discovery, Dr. Dailey and his colleagues met the girl and her family at an international porphyria conference.

“That was sort of cool,” Dailey said, his voice softening.  “It was fun for them, too, because they realized that people actually cared about their daughter.”

As consuming as Dailey finds his research, he has other passions as well.

“When I grew up, I learned everything my mom wanted my sisters to know, so I know how to cook and sew and stuff like that,” Dailey said. “And I learned everything my dad wanted me to know, so I can repair cars and stuff like that.”

Dailey has even designed and built a vacation house on an island off Georgia’s coast with his wife, Tamara Dailey, who also works as a research professional in his lab.

“It’s not unlike science,” Dailey said of the project. “It’s a challenge when there’s just two of you and you’re trying to levitate something that’s 350 pounds 15 feet in the air.”

The experience has made it easy for him to chat with people who don’t normally spend time in a microbiology lab.

“If the plumbers are here, he can talk with them and he appreciates what they do because he knows how much trouble it is and what goes into it,” said Linda Buffington, Dailey’s assistant and the budget officer for the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute.

“I’ve probably had just as many non-science conversations with him as I’ve had science conversations,” said Joseph Burch, a third-year M.D.-Ph.D. student in Dailey’s lab.

Dailey’s latest research, published online in Nature on Nov. 7, involves how heme is regulated when red blood cells multiply. It will appear in the print edition on Nature on Nov. 22.

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