David Nanney came as a Professor of Zoology to the Urbana-Champaign campus in 1959. Fashionable trends in the taxonomy of biology departments changed his departments of affiliation from Zoology, to Genetics and Development, to Ecology, Ethology and Evolution, and finally to Animal Biology. Physically his laboratory was located initially in the Department of Microbiology, transiently in the departments named above (without moving) and finally in the Department of Entomology. His teaching assignments included Heredity, General Genetics. Genetics of Microorganisms, Cell Biology, Analysis of Development, Nature and Nurture, and Scientific Writing. Nanney served as coordinator of interdepartmental biology programs, director of the Undergraduate Biology Program, and director of the all-university graduate Genetics program. In 1991 he became Professor Emeritus.

The Nanney laboratory was dedicated to the study of the genetics of ciliated protozoa of the genus Tetrahymena. The work continued the program begun in 1952 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in collaboration with A. M. (Del) Elliott, which was soon joined by Sally Lyman Allen. The program at Michigan was continued by Allen after Nanney departed until her own retirement. The studies at Michigan and Illinois were also in a real sense continuations of the research program of Tracy M. Sonneborn in ciliate genetics carried out at Indiana University in Bloomington, where Nanney received his graduate training. The major change from the Sonneborn program was a switch of organisms - from Paramecium to Tetrahymena.

The development of tetrahymena into the laboratory instrument that has become useful in the analysis of eukaryotic epigenetics, began at the University of Michigan with an identification of genetic markers, an analysis of macronuclear assortment, and an intensive inbreeding program to produce vigorous homozygous strains. Sally Allen was the major associate in this work. This project concentrated primarily on the strains of Tetrahymena thermophila assembled by A. M. Elliott’s forays into the natural world. A year (1958-59) that Nanney spent at Cal Tech with Ray Owen and his associates made possible the inclusion of serotype markers in the breeding program. Working on this foundation, the laboratories of Sally Allen (Michigan), Peter Bruns (Cornell) and Eduardo Orias (Santa Barbara) eventually established the basis of modern tetrahymena technology. Other contributors who supplied molecular expertise, enthusiastic workers and noteworthy achievements were Marty Gorovsky (Syracuse), Elizabeth Blackburn (Berkeley) and Tom Cech (Boulder), who entered the domain of tetrahymena from other traditions.

At Illinois Nanney, unequipped by training or temperament to participate in increasingly technical developments, shifted his focus and began exploring other biological phenomena. The Illinois laboratory espoused a broadly comparative approach, always concerned with tetrahymena, but not exclusively with a few strains or one species. At different times the laboratory focused predominantly on genetic, morphogenetic, and evolutionary problems. The methods used changed as technology advanced, from tinctorial cytology and classic breeding studies to isozymic, immunological and eventually sequencing technology.

The development of this web site was motivated primarily by the impulse to make more accessible some of the scattered data on the biodiversity and biogeography of the tetrahymena species collected in exploring the roles of ciliates in the natural world.

The successful funding strategy for the Illinois tetrahymena program was to argue the advantages of a ciliate organismic technology as a tool in comparative genetics, but many bootlegged experiments were frankly exploratory and contributed little to the development of the sophisticated analytical instrument that T. thermophila became. Fortunately, the laboratories of Allen, Orias, and Bruns provided the intense focus and the technical sophistication required for eventual success in the darwinian struggle for funding among competing organismic technologies. The most intense competitor often appeared to be the emerging powerhouse of yeast genetics.

Several undergraduates were welcomed to the tetrahymena laboratory as part of their educational experience. Many were participants in the Honors Biology Program that Nanney initiated, and which featured direct research experience in student-formulated projects. Some of these efforts produced publishable material, but their purpose was to acquaint the student with the process of formulating questions and asking them to live organisms. A number of graduate students also participated in the laboratory’s program. The graduate students were also required to formulate, execute and publish their own studies. This practice sometimes limited students’ immediate contributions to the laboratory program, but may have increased their long term contributions as research workers. Visiting scholars were similarly treated as independent investigators, and not assigned niches in funded projects. The projects funded by research grants from NSF and NIH were executed by professional personnel. The staff ranged from short-term undergraduate and graduate assistants to a basic corps of long-term associates who provided continuity over decades in some cases.

Some of the graduate students who were able to persist in ciliate studies after completing their degree requirements were Eduardo Orias, Peter Bruns, Paul Doerder and Dennis Nyberg. Post-doctoral associates who continue Wd to contribute significantly after being exposed to a lack of appropriate direction included Sally Allen, Lea Bleyman, Andrzej Kaczanowski and Nicola Ricci. Other laboratory workers went on to productive careers in a wide diversity of fields - from Botany and Genetic Counseling, to Fish Genetics and Pharmaceuticals, and to Medicine and Undergraduate Education. The professional associates who contributed to the activity of the Tetrahymena Program over the longest intervals were Ellen M. Simon, E. Barbara Meyer, and RosaMaria Preparata. Ellen Simon’s contributions included the maintenance of inbred strains and representatives of other tetrahymena species. She developed methods for preserving tetrahymena in liquid nitrogen, and eventually endowed the Nanney-Simon Tetrahymena Collection at the American Type Culture Collection in Bethesda, MD.