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Junior Year Fellowship Recipients for 2008-2009
Kudos to the following students who received Junior Year Fellowships this year: Katarina Anderson in Craig Martin's lab, Christopher Ferreira in
John Nambu's lab, Ngoc Ho in Lynmarie Thompson's lab, Joon Hyung Kim in Joe
Kunkel's lab, Yurie Kim in Scott Garman's lab, Catherine Martin in
Melinda Novak's lab, Jennifer Morris in Janice Telfer's lab, Jesse Punch in
Wei-Lih Lee's lab, Matthew Rich in Jeff Podos'lab, Mona Salameh in Ana
Caceido's lab, Hilary Schiffer in Pat Schloss' lab, Cornelius Taabazuing
in Nathan Schnarr's lab, Pardeep Thandi in Sankaran ("Thai") Thayumanavan's lab, Michael
Vallerie in Peg Riley's lab, and Nikki Woodward in Dan Hebert's lab.
Research Highlighted in Television Series
Duncan Irschick's research on the gecko is one of the features on a new series, Weird Connections, on the Discovery Science Channel. The half hour feature, "The Sticky Gecko," will be broadcast several times in the next few weeks: on September 30, 10:30 PM; October 1, 1:30 AM; October 2, 5:30 AM; October 5, 4:30 PM and October 19, 4:30 PM.
New Faculty Member Receives New Grant
Samuel Hazen has received a three-year $1.2M grant as part of a joint DOE-USDA program begun in 2006 which aims to accelerate fundamental research in biomass genomics to further the use of cellulosic plant material for bioenergy and biofuels. DOE's Office of Biological and Environmental Research will provide a total of $8.8 million while USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service will provide a total of $2 million to ten institutions over a three year period.
Academic Year Research Internships for Undergraduates
HHMI is now accepting applications for the 2008-2009 HHMI Academic Year Research Internship Program. The program supports 16 students to initiate or continue their laboratory research (with an emphasis in genomics, bioinformatics and bioimaging) during the academic year. Students eligible to apply for these internships include life science majors in their Sophomore or Junior year with an overall grade point average of 3.0 or better. Seniors and students chosen to be Junior Fellows are not eligible to apply.
Each HHMI research intern will receive a $1000 stipend with an additional $250 being provided to the host laboratory for research supplies. Participants will be selected based on their academic credentials, their proposed research project and recommendations. Application materials can be obtained at the Academic Year Research Internship Program website. Deadline is Monday, Sept. 29 at 5 pm.
Science Research Opportunities Fair
 The HHMI Undergraduate Science Program in conjunction with the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship will be hosting the second annual Science Research Opportunities Fair on Thursday, September 18 from 4:00-6:00pm in room 101 in the Campus Center. The fair will showcase undergraduate opportunities for research, internships and programs in the departments of Biology, Biochemistry,
Chemistry, Microbiology, Kinesiology and many more.
Faculty Member Publishes Book
Karen Searcy has recently completed the “Vascular Flora of the Greater Mount Holyoke Range” as a special publication of the New England Botanical Club. In addition to an annotated list of 863 species, the flora includes information on land use, geology, soils, climate, vegetation, plant communities and a brief history of botanical collection in the Range. Work on the flora and its publication was also supported in part by the Jane Hallenbeck Bemis Endowment for Research in Natural History.
Faculty Member Receives Grant
E. R. Dumont (Biology) and co-PI I. R. Grosse (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) received a four-year, $982,633 grant from the National Science Foundation to support a new website called Biomesh, which teaches biologists how to study the behavior of biomechanical systems using the same computer modeling technique employed by engineers designing aircraft or bridges. Known as finite element analysis, this technique has revolutionized engineering, and has the potential to transform how biologists approach research in areas ranging from functional morphology and developmental biology to the study of evolution and cellular mechanics. Biomesh will support this learning experience by developing a shared digital resource collection of finite element models of biological systems. Biologists are just beginning to use finite element modeling to understand the biomechanical behavior of biological organs, tissues and even cells in both living and extinct organisms. Dumont research focus, for example, is how the physics involved in feeding has affected the evolution of diversity in mammals.
Graduate Student Receives Grant
OEB graduate student Justin Henningsen, who works in Duncan Irschick's lab, recently received an NSF predoctoral grant for $120,000 to conduct detailed studies on the role of the throatfan in dictating reproductive success and survival in green anole lizards. Justin will conduct field studies in Georgia on natural populations that he will be able to mark and follow over time and record details on processes of life, death, and birth. Graduate Student Wins Poster Contest
Sadie Bergeron, an MCB graduate student working in Rolf Karlstrom's lab, won first prize in the poster contest at the April 2008 Northeast Regional Meetings of the Society for Developmental Biology in Woods Hole. The prize was a $1000 travel award to attend the national meeting in Philadelphia this summer.
Poster will be on display in the hall near the Karlstrom lab in Morrill 2 . It's titled: "Umleitung/(Brother of CDO; boc) is required for RGC axon guidance and ventral CNS specification in the developing zebrafish embryo."
Natural History Collections Summer Scholarships Awarded
The second annual NHC summer scholarships were announced on April 2, 2008. The funding for these scholarships is provided by the Jane Hallenbeck Bemis Endowment for Research in Natural History and the David J. Klingener Endowment Fund. All students conducting collections-based research under the mentorship of a UMass faculty member or a faculty member associated with a life sciences graduate program were eligible to apply. This year we funded twelve students studying a wide variety of research topics:
Kristian Brevik (undergraduate, Hampshire College), "Preparation of an articulated dolphin skeleton" (mentor: Al Richmond, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Nicole Soper Gordon (PhD student, PSIS) "Effects of a galling insect on pollination and herbivory of its host plant" (mentor: Lynne Adler, PSIS, UMass Amherst).
Rodger Gwiazdowski (PhD Student, OEB and Entomology), "Cryptic species, phylogeography, host specialization, and evolution of parthenogenesis in pine scale insects across North America" (mentor: Ben Normark, PSIS, UMass Amherst).
Lori Johnson (PhD student, Antioch University of New England), "The ecology of eastern musk turtle ecology in Massachusetts" (mentor: Al Richmond, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Katherine Kauffman (PhD student, OEB), "The foraging behavior of razorbills (seabirds) at the southern limit of their range" (mentor: Paul Sievert, NRC, UMass Amherst).
David McMillan (PhD student, OEB), "Geographic and seasonal variation in thermal tolerance in the western fence lizard, Scoloperus occidentalis" (mentor: Duncan Irschick, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Adilia Nogueira, (PhD student, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, in Manaus, Brazil), "Three new species of Microsternarchus from the Negro River Basin, Amazon, Brazil" (mentor: Cristina Cox Fernandes, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Emilienne Rasoazanabary (PhD student, Anthropology), "Stratigraphic and morphological analysis of mouse lemur jaws from Andrahomana Cave, Southeastern Madagascar" (mentor: Laurie Godfrey, Anthropology, UMass Amherst).
Ariel Rodriguez and Jose Calderone (MS students, University of Costa Rica), "Morphological and Physiological adaptations of bats" (mentor: Betsy Dumont, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Sharlene Santana (PhD student, OEB) "The Evolution of feeding habits and cranial morphology in neotropical leaf-nosed bats" (mentor: Betsy Dumont, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Natalia Taft (PhD student, OEB), "Pectoral fin evolution in the malaculemorph fishes" (mentor: Cristina Cox Fernandes, Biology, UMass Amherst).
Research Highlighted in Science Daily
Research in Duncan Irschick's laboratory was recently featured on the front page of Science Daily, which features the most exciting work in all scientific fields. This research showed that lizards that were introduced to islands only 36 years ago have rapidly evolved new gut structures and feeding performance.
Undergraduate Receives Research Fellowship
Kelli Pattavina, an undergraduate Biology major working in Magdalena Bezanilla's lab, has won grant funding from the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) 2008 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. The goal of the SURF program is to provide opportunities for students to pursue meaningful research in plant biology at their home institutions early in their college years. The program targets students who have just completed their sophomore year of their undergraduate studies. Kelli won for the project entitled Genotyping Moss ADF Overexpression Lines.
The SURF award includes $3,000 undergraduate student summer research funds, a one-year student membership to ASPB, and $500 for student travel to Plant Biology 2009 in Honolulu, HI. A $500 mentor stipend (which can include supplies from the mentor) is also awarded. Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Summer Research Interns
Congratulations to the 2008 Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Summer Research Internship recipients!
The following students were chosen to participate in the 2008 Summer Research Internship Program. They will be conducting full time research in their host labs and will receive a $3600 stipend for the summer.
Greg Brennan - Nambu Lab (Biology);
Joseph Burbage - Stuart Lab (Microbiology);
Scott Fay - Bezanilla lab (Biology);
Chris Meaden - Lee Lab (Biology);
David Paquette - Gierasch Lab (Biochemistry);
Erin Parker - Downes Lab (Biology);
Jerome Rogich - Garman Lab (Biochemistry);
Mona Salameh - Caicedo Lab (Biology);
Dimitri Steblovsky- Gierasch Lab (Biochemistry);
Maryam Suberu - Jerry Lab (Vet. and Animal Sciences);
Cornelius Taabazuing - Schnarr Lab (Chemistry);
Pardeep Thandi - Thayumanavan Lab (Chemistry);
Nikki Woodward - Hebert Lab (Biochemistry). Article Published
The Irschick lab recently published an article in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that a species of lizard introduced to a novel island environment has rapidly evolved a new macroevolutionary feature. The paper is:
Herrel A, Huyghe K, Vanhooydonck B, Backeljau T, Breugelmans K, Grbac I, Van Damme R, Irschick DJ. 2008. Rapid large scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with the exploitation of a novel dietary resource in the lizard Podarcis sicula. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105:4792-4795.
Lecturer Honored
Michael Dolan, who teaches Biol 105 for Continuing and Professional Education, has been elected Secretary of the International Society of Protistologists. He is also working with Rob Cox, head of special collections at the W.E.B. DuBois Library, to create a history of protistology collection.
Upcoming Biology Department Seminars
The Biology Department is sponsoring a number of seminars in the next few weeks, each to be held at 4:00 PM in Morrill 2, Room 319A (OEB Seminar Room), refreshments to be served at 3:45.
Tuesday, February 5th, Anthony Herrel; Monday, February 11th, Robert Cox; Tuesday, February 12th, Ewa Urbanczyk-Wochniak; Tuesday, February 19th, Samuel Hazen; Monday, February 25th, Esteban Fernandez; Tuesday, Feburary 26th, Brian Gregory; Monday, March 3rd, Ivan Baxter; Wednesday, March 5th, Dustin Rubenstein; Monday, March 10th, Sheila Patek. Faculty Member Honored
Tobias Baskin has become a "United States Partner" of the Center for Integrated Plant Biology based at the University of Nottingham, UK. The partnership was recently funded by the BBSRC (British Basic Science Research Council) to apply systems approaches to study hormone regulated root growth. Funding is for four years, and will cover short-term, reciprocal visits between researchers in Nottingham and Amherst as well as several other sites in UK and USA, to develop tools and collaborative projects, and for organizing several international workshop-style meetings.
2008 Sinauer Associates Lectureship in Biology
Michael J. Ryan will give the 2008 Sinauer lecture in Biology on Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 4:15 PM in the Flavin Auditorium (SOM 137). The title of his lecture is "Sexual selection and communication in the Tungara frog: Brain, behavior and evolution." Refreshments will be served at 4 PM.
Michael J. Ryan is the Clark Hubbs Regents Professor in Zoology at the University of Texas, Austin, and a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. His research on sexual selection and communication is among the pioneering work in the integration of brain, behavior and evolution. His 1985 book, The Tungara Frog: A Study of Sexual Selection and Communication, has become a classic, and continues to be a leader in his field with recent and influential papers in Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences among others.
Ryan's primary research interest is in the mechanisms and evolution of animal communication. His approach has been to integrate Tinbergen's "four questions": function (adaptive significance), evolution (phylogenetic patterns), mechanisms, and acquisition of behavior (learning and development). He has addressed how sexual selection and species recognition promote the evolution and phylogenetic patterns of signal diversity and the brain mechanisms that decode it. In addition, his work unveils fascinating natural history in animals as varied as frogs, swordtail fishers, frog-eating bats, and blood-sucking flies.
Faculty Member Receives Grant
R. Thomas Zoeller recently received a one-year grant for $386,678 from NIH to study PCB disruption of thyroid hormone action during development. The long-term goals of this research are to determine the mechanisms by which polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) disrupt thyroid hormone (TH) action during brain development, to define the neurological consequences of this disruption in rodent model systems, and to translate this information to study human populations. PCBs are widespread and persistent environmental contaminants, and incidental exposure to PCBs has been associated with reduced TH levels in pregnant women, lower birth weight and early growth rate, and neurological deficits. We propose that a combination of coplanar (dioxin-like) and non-coplanar PCBs are required to produce non-coplanar metabolites that bind to the TH receptor (TR), producing effects that are dependent on the TH response element (TRE), cellular context and TR isoform. The resulting effects on brain development are not predictable based on our current knowledge. To test this hypothesis and its implications, we will identify specific PCB metabolites in cell culture and in animals following treatments with defined mixtures. AhR-null and CYP1A1-null mice will be employed to confirm the role of AhR and CYP in the generation of PCB metabolites and effects on TH signaling. Specific metabolites will be tested for their ability to bind to rat and human TR_1 and TR_1 isoforms. Metabolites that exhibit binding will be characterized for their ability to interfere with TH signaling in cell culture and in animal studies. In vitro studies will specifically address the ability of PCB metabolites to act as thyroid hormone agonists or antagonists. A combination of approaches including luciferase reporter assays, electrophoretic mobility shift (EMSA) and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) will be used in these in vitro studies. Human cells lines derived from liver, fibroblast, monocytes and neurons will be used to test whether these molecular events occur in humans. Endpoints of TH actions disrupted by PCBs in human fibroblasts or monocytes may be useful in studying these events in human populations.
This page is maintained by Karen Nelson. Send email to <knelson@bio.umass.edu>
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