Published: Monday, March 26, 2012 at 12:57 p.m. Last Modified: Monday, March 26, 2012 at 12:57 p.m.

Longtime biology teacher, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Nicholls State University, and native son John Doucet will become a full dean, pending approval from the state University Board of Supervisors.

Doucet, who hails from Golden Meadow, has led the school since July, when Badiollah Asrabadi retired as dean.

Arts and Sciences is the largest academic unit on campus. It is responsible for many of the general education courses that all Nicholls students take and encompasses more than 150 faculty in 10 departments.

As a researcher, Doucet has contributed to 150 presentations, letters and workshops and more than 50 full-length publications. He has secured more than $1 million in research grants, and he also is the first certified public-health geneticist in the state of Louisiana.

He has served in several administrative roles, including heading up the schools honors program.

(Doucet) has been involved in projects and research related to both the arts and sciences, and his leadership is particularly evident through the continued growth of the University Honors Program, said Laynie Barrilleaux, vice president for academic affairs.

Aside from his scientific pursuits, Doucet has written stage plays and history books, most of which focus on his native south Louisiana.

Barrileaux said the focus on arts and sciences makes him a special fit for the head of the broadest college on campus. She also touts his ties to the local community.

Dr. Doucet brings with him an extensive knowledge of the university and the community it serves, she said.

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New dean named at Nicholls

Taking a small amount of initiative outside of class has paid off academically for senior biology major Kelsey Hampton. Hampton has been selected to present her research on the morphology of fiddler crabs at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Utah, held at Weber State University from March 29 through March 31.

While working with Carl Thurman, a professor in the biology department, Hampton and several other students have been studying the effects of various conditions such as climate change and environmental damage from oil spills on two separate populations of crabs in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

Were using Brazilian fiddler crabs as a model organism to observe relationships among species, Hampton said. Were watching evolution happen right now.

In the summer of 2011, Hampton, Dr. Thurman, and other students collected field data on the crabs along the Gulf Coast between Panama City, Fla., and Galveston, Texas.

The trip last summer was my favorite part of this project, Hampton said. We met a lot of new people from different schools and programs, and collecting information in the field was just really fun.

Hampton primarily attributes her success to good old-fashioned hard work and dedication, but also commends the UNI biology departments accessibility to students.

I really feel like the smaller class sizes make it easier to talk with professors and ask questions, as well as just getting to know everyone better, she said. Early on in college I was nervous about asking to take part in research, but all you really have to do is go in and talk to the professors. A lot of it is just taking that initiative.

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Undergrad researcher makes her mark in UNI biology department

ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2012) Significant boosts in the microbial production of clean, green and renewable biodiesel fuel has been achieved with the development of a new technique in synthetic biology by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). This new technique -- dubbed a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS) -- can detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production. The result in one demonstration was a threefold increase in the microbial production of biodiesel from glucose.

"The DSRS is an amazing and powerful new tool, the first example of a synthetic system that can dynamically regulate a metabolic pathway for improving production of fatty acid-based fuels and chemicals while the microbes are in the bioreactor," says Jay Keasling, CEO of JBEI and one of the world's foremost practitioners of synthetic biology, who led this research.

Keasling, who also serves as the Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in Nature Biotechnology. The paper is titled "Design of a dynamic sensor-regulator system for production of FAbased chemicals and fuels." Co-authors are Fuzhong Zhang and James Carothers of JBEI's Fuels Synthesis Division, which is directed by Keasling.

The need for new transportation fuels that are renewable and can be produced in a sustainable fashion has never been more urgent. Scientific studies have consistently shown that liquid fuels derived from plant biomass are one of the best alternatives if a cost-effective means of commercial production can be found. Major research efforts to this end are focused on fatty acids -- the energy-rich molecules in plant cells that have been dubbed nature's petroleum. Fatty acids now serve as the raw materials not only for biodiesel fuel, but also for a wide range of important chemical products including surfactants, solvents and lubricants.

"Microbial production of fuels and chemicals from fatty acids is a greener and sustainable alternative to chemical synthesis," says Zhang, who is the lead author of the Nature Biotechnology paper. "However, high productivities, titers and yields are essential for microbial production of these chemical products to be economically viable, particularly in the cases of biofuels and low-value bulk chemicals."

Hampering microbial production of fatty acid-based chemicals has been metabolic imbalances during product synthesis.

"Expression of pathway genes at too low a level creates bottlenecks in biosynthetic pathways, whereas expression at too high a level diverts cellular resources to the production of unnecessary enzymes or intermediate metabolites that might otherwise be devoted to the desired chemical," Zhang says. "Furthermore, the accumulation of these enzymes and intermediate metabolites can have a toxic effect on the microbes, reducing yield and productivity."

Using the tools of synthetic biology, there have been several strategies developed to meet this challenge but these previous strategies only provide static control of gene expression levels.

"When a gene expression control system is tuned for a particular condition in the bioreactor and the conditions change, the control system will not be able to respond and product synthesis will suffer as a result," Zhang says.

The DSRS responds to the metabolic status of the microbe in the bioreactor during synthesis by sensing key intermediate metabolites in an engineered pathway. The DSRS then regulates the genes that control the production and consumption of these intermediates to allow their delivery at levels and rates that optimize the pathway for maximum productivity as conditions change in the bioreactor.

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New synthetic biology technique boosts microbial production of diesel fuel

A professor holds plastic bait next to an aquarium containing largemouth bass. ( MCT file photo )

After a frustrating day on the water, many fishermen return to the dock and make the bass out to be the Ph.D of the fish world.

But here's some news for you: The largemouth isn't nearly as smart as it might seem.

"Some fishermen give the bass far too much credit," said Keith Jones, who is in charge of research at the Berkley Fish Research Station in Iowa. "The bass doesn't have the ability to reason. As soon as it hatches, it is genetically pre programmed to follow certain behavior.

"It relies on its senses to guide its actions. Its vision, hearing, sense of smell and taste . . . . that all plays a part. It's a sensory machine, and the sooner we as fishermen learn how those senses guide the bass's behavior, the more fish we will catch."

When it's time to feed, that sensory machine is fully operational.

The bass relies on its vision as its No. 1 asset. It has eyes that are specially adapted for underwater use, allowing for a wide range of vision. Jones said the bass has a maximum viewing distance of about 50 feet. But it has small binocular fields for close-up viewing to scrutinize its prey.

"We have seen many times in our research where a bass will rush across a tank at something, then stop to study it, then it will veer off," said Jones, who wrote the book

Whatever the case, the bass' s eyesight isn't nearly as sharp as a human's.

"The sharpness of their vision is only 10 percent of ours," Jones said. "When they look at an object, they don't see nearly the detail we do." That's why bass often rely on their unique hearing system to help. They have a lateral line that runs across the body to pick up vibrations.

Originally posted here:
Understanding biology of the largemouth is key to catching them

University of Rochester Medical Center said this week that Hulin Wu, a professor of biostatistics and computational biology, will serve as the founding director of its newly established Center for Integrative Bioinformatics and Experimental Mathematics.

The new center is part of the university's department of biostatistics and computational biology and will work on integrating and strengthening current biostatistics, bioinformatics, and computational biology resources at the center. The school hopes to develop a strong interdisciplinary research program and attract external funding, in particular large center grants and program grants in bioinformatics, computational biology and systems biology. It also plans to establish a PhD/MS education program in bioinformatics and computational biology

Initially, the center will serve researchers conducting basic science experiments, clinical studies, and translational research in immunology and infectious diseases. It also hopes to develop techniques and approaches to manage, analyze, and extract meaningful information from biomedical data.

Biogazelle, a real-time PCR data analysis company, has tapped Kris Vanhercke to serve as its chief operating officer.

Prior to joining Biogazelle, Vanhercke held a number of positions within Roche Diagnostics with the most recent being sales director for Roche Diagnostics Belgian office. He also held a scientific sales position at Boehringer Mannheim.

The American Medical Informatics Association has tapped Kevin Fickenscher as president and CEO of the organization.

Fickenscher will officially start his new role on April 1. He replaces Ted Shortliffe, who announced his decision to step down from the position several months ago.

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People in the News: Hulin Wu; Kris Vanhercke; Kevin Fickenscher

By a GenomeWeb staff reporter

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) Because complex diseases can result from multiple perturbations to normally functioning biological networks and pathways, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute plans to fund new research project grants that will use a systems biology approach to studying a variety of disorders.

Under a new funding program, NHLBI aims to support multi-disciplinary, collaborative research projects that use experimental and computational approaches to understanding normal physiology and perturbations that are involved in heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders.

Collaborative teams of researchers from the biomedical, informatics, physical, and mathematical disciplines, which may be headed by multiple principal investigators, will use funding from the Exploratory Program in Systems Biology to develop computational models and perform experiments in a wide range of areas.

Because the nature and scope of the collaborative projects will vary from project to project, the size and duration of the awards will vary.

These systems biology projects may involve a wide range of studies including, but not limited to, research that integrates existing data from genome-wide association and microarray studies with data from the project; integrates imaging and 'omics data to define factors of atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability; develops systems approaches to molecular network features that can categorize disease susceptibility and drug responses; and predicts, validates, and implements biomarker signatures for monitoring drug mechanism of action, drug efficacy, and toxicities.

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NHLBI to Fund Collaborative Systems Biology Disease Studies

Egg watch ... a tour group watches a turtle nesting on Mon Repos beach.

In one crowded day in Bundaberg, Keith Austin sips rum before lunch, takes an aviation history lesson and watches the cycle of life under a full moon.

If you drive into Bundaberg from the south, a sign welcomes you to the city and proudly reveals this was the home of Bert Hinkler. Who? Who? There are no signs to the Bundaberg Rum distillery that I can find but there's a sign about Bert Hinkler?

I'd never heard of the bloke but a few hours later I'm puzzled that nobody has made a movie about his amazing, blazing firework of a life. And I've gained an appreciation for Bundaberg Rum - which, for a single-malt man, is damascene in its implications.

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A few hours later, on a warm evening under a ghostly full moon, a giant loggerhead turtle calmly squirts a hundred or so ping-pong-ball eggs into a shallow hole on Mon Repos beach, to the north of Bundaberg, where Bert Hinkler's story began in the baby years of the 20th century.

But first, that distillery. The turtles might be the main attraction but missing the Bundaberg distillery tour would be like going to the Black Forest and not having the gateau.

The city was named in 1867 by jamming together the Aboriginal word "bunda" (elder) with the Saxon suffix "berg" (mountain). The district of 112,000 people sits at the tail end of the Great Barrier Reef, and Mon Repos beach, 14 kilometres from Bundaberg, has the largest and most accessible mainland turtle rookery on the east coast of Australia. Loggerhead, green and flatback turtles come ashore to lay their eggs here between November and March each year.

It's also surrounded by sugar cane farms - the first Bundaberg sugar mill was built in 1872. A major by-product of sugar refining is molasses - an overabundance of which led a group of sugar millers to an ingenious solution in 1888, when they established the Bundaberg Rum distillery.

That dark syrupy liquid is piped underground direct from the mill into the distillery and stored in several molasses "wells", which are the first port of call on the distillery tour.

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Bert, Bundy and biology

Public release date: 21-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Ingrid L. Thomas ithomas@aadronline.org 703-299-8084 International & American Associations for Dental Research

Tampa, Fla., USA On March 23, during the 41st Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR), held in conjunction with the 36th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, a symposium titled "TMJ: Stem Cell Biology and Engineering toward Clinical Translation" will provide a rare forum for multidisciplinary discussion of the biology, engineering and clinical translation of fundamental discoveries towards novel clinical therapy. The symposium is co-sponsored by the Craniofacial Biology, Mineralized Tissue and Neuroscience Scientific Research Groups of the International Association for Dental Research. The presentations in this multidisciplinary symposium will represent broad and yet comprehensive approaches toward the understanding of the origin, homeostasis, differentiation, hormonal regulation and bioengineering of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) tissues.

TMJ disorders are a poorly understood cluster of diseases, ranging from neuromuscular pain to severe forms of arthritis. Recently, stem/progenitor cells have been identified in TMJ disc and condyle, with potential origin from neural crest cells in development. Putative TMJ stem/progenitor cells are subjected to local, hormonal and other systemic factors in homeostasis in multiple processes that warrant better elucidation. In parallel, there is an acute demand in the clinical community for the regeneration of various TMJ components, including the disc, condyle, synovium and the mandible.

This symposium will not only provide new aspects of a timely and under-studied subject of TMJ biology and therapeutics, but also use TMJ as a model for the study of other dental and craniofacial structures and diseases.

###

This is a summary of sequence #87 titled "TMJ: Stem Cell Biology and Engineering toward Clinical Translation" which will feature abstracts to be presented by M. Embree, M. Detamore, A. Le and S. Kapila at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research. This symposium will take place at 8 a.m. on Friday, March 23, 2012, in room 10 of the Tampa Convention Center.

About the American Association for Dental Research

The American Association for Dental Research (AADR), headquartered in Alexandria, Va., is a nonprofit organization with nearly 4,000 members in the United States. Its mission is: (1) to advance research and increase knowledge for the improvement of oral health; (2) to support and represent the oral health research community; and (3) to facilitate the communication and application of research findings. AADR is the largest Division of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR).

To learn more about the AADR, visit http://www.aadronline.org.

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TMJ: Stem cell biology and engineering toward clinical translation

Leatherback turtles slowly crawled along the Costa Rican shores to lay their eggs as Harvard students watched carefully nearby in the nighttime.

This year, three classes from the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Department offered all-expenses-paid spring break trips for its students.

Twenty-seven students traveled to Panama for trips offered by OEB 51: Biology and Evolution of Invertebrate Animals and OEB 190: Biology and Diversity of Birds, while 21 students in OEB 167: Herpetology studied amphibians and reptiles in Costa Rica.

This year marked OEB 51s seventh trip to Panamas tropical coasts. Students spent each day diving into the water to collect and photograph specimens before bringing them to the lab for further investigation.

OEB Associate Professor Cassandra Extavour, who led the trip with OEB Professor Gonzalo Giribet, said that she hopes the trip helped students understand invertebrates and the importance of anatomical study.

Theres no better way to understand biology than to get inside itwhether its seeing organisms in the wild or seeing the inside of a cell through high resolution microscopy, said Extavour. That visual and tactile element is very important in cementing the students learning.

Diversity that had been enumerated in course lectures came to life for OEB 51 students once they strapped on their snorkels.

The underwater topography was steep, and it was amazing to see the distribution and sheer diversity of the corals, sponges, starfish, sea urchins, squid, snails, jellyfish, [and] shrimp..., wrote Emily A. Burke 14 in an emailed statement. The list goes on, and...its hard to just pick out a few favorite [organisms] or isolate them from each other because everything is so intricately connected.

In Costa Rica, OEB Professors Jonathan B. Losos 84 and James Hanken assigned their OEB 167 students the task of becoming resident experts in specific reptile and amphibian species before the trip. Throughout the week, the students shared information about their organisms as they encountered them in the wild.

We get to see the habitats and microhabitats that [these organisms] are found in, hear them calling, [and] see them eating, said Hanken.

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OEB Students Take Sponsored Spring Break Trips

Published: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 10:16 p.m. Last Modified: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 10:16 p.m.

Oil industry giant Shell has donated $50,000 to Nicholls State Universitys biology department to strengthen a native-plants program.

The money will support the Louisiana Plant Initiative, which is spearheaded by the schools biology program and involves several universities throughout the state.

The initiative uses students, instructors and community volunteers to distribute native plants used to help bolster coastal Louisiana.

Allyse Ferrara, a biology professor who leads the project, said the Shell donation will allow flexibility. Grants typically come with strict spending guidelines.

If something breaks that we cant pay for with a grant, this will let us fix it, she said. It allows us to have the freedom to go do additional things that arent funded by our other grants.

Ferrara and her team grow plants that are native to coastal Louisiana and help keep the ecosystem balanced. Grasses, weeds and other plants not native to the area often have different growth cycles that dont support local animal life nearly as well as native species.

So far, the project has planted thousands of native grasses and mangrove trees in places like Grand Isle, Elmers Island, Leeville and the Fourchon area. Ferrara said the native plants will help spur growth of plants and animals, resist invasive species and anchor the soil against erosion.

The project also keeps a stock of plants inland in case floods, hurricanes or other events destroy swaths of plant life.

Lets say theres some sort of catastrophe, Ferrara said. This will let us move in quickly and replace the lost ground to prevent that damage from becoming permanent.

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Shell donates $50,000 to Nicholls

by Franklin P. Gomapon

DIPOLOG CITY The Andres Bonifacio College hosted the scientific seminar in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology held recently at the Arts, Graduate and Professional Schools (AGPS) building of the said school.

The said seminar was spearheaded by the Samahang Pisika ng Visayas at Mindanao (SPVM) and the College Extension Committee (CEC) of the College of Sciences and Mathematics (CSM), Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), Iligan City.

Lectures in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology were delivered by well-known researchers and professors from MSU-IIT.

For Physics, Dr. Reynaldo M. Vequizo, SPVM President and chairman of the Physics department, talked about Identifying Key Properties of Materials using Radiation: The Case of XRD and with Electron Beam while Dr. Arnold C. Alguno talked on the topic, Emerging Materials Science Trends: The MSU-IIT Experience.

Prof. Rosario L. Reserva also gave a lecture-demonstration on some physics apparatuses fabricated by the institutes physics department which are being used in mechanics experiments.

Dr. Ruth P. Serquia of the department of Mathematics, on the other hand, gave a lecture on computer simulation in Mathematics while Prof. Catherine R. Cano discussed sequential analysis and its applications.

Biologists Dr. Mark Anthony Torres and Dr. Cesar Demayo, chairman of the biological sciences department of MSU-IIT, talked on the trends in life science research and biology graduate programs, respectively.

The scientific seminar, participated by teachers from the elementary, secondary and tertiary levels, was organized to enhance the science and mathematics teaching capabilities of teachers and to facilitate deeper learning among students through research.

With the different graduate programs offered by MSU-IIT, particularly by the College of Sciences and Mathematics, the speakers invited the participants to apply and take up graduate studies at the said university as slots are still available under the scholarship program of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

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SPVM holds scientific seminar in Dipolog

Public release date: 20-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kevin Stacey kstacey@press.uchicago.edu 401-284-3878 University of Chicago Press Journals

A new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology helps explain why the immune system often makes us worse while trying to make us well.

The research offers a new perspective on a component of the immune system known as the acute-phase response, a series of systemic changes in blood protein levels, metabolic function, and physiology that sometimes occurs when bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens invade the body. This response puts healthy cells and tissue under serious stress, and is actually the cause of many of the symptoms we associate with being sick.

"The question is why would these harmful components evolve," asks Edmund LeGrand (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), who wrote the paper titled with Joe Alcock (University of New Mexico). The researchers contend that answer becomes clear when we view the acute-phase response in terms of what they call "immune brinksmanship."

The immune brinksmanship model "is the gamble that systemic stressors will harm the pathogens relatively more than the host," LeGrand said. The concept, he explains, is akin to what happens in international trade disputes. When one country places trade sanctions on another, both countries' economies take a hit, but the sanctioning country is betting that its opponent will be hurt more.

"One of our contributions here is to pull together the reasons why pathogens suffer more from systemic stress," LeGrand said.

The acute-phase response creates stress in several ways. It raises body temperature and causes loss of appetite and mild anemia. At the same time, certain vital nutrients like iron, zinc, and manganese are partially sequestered away from the bloodstream.

Some of these components are quite puzzling. Why reduce food intake just when one would expect more energy would be needed to mount a strong immune response? Zinc is essential for healthy immune function. Why pull it out of the bloodstream when the immune system is active? The benefits of a stressor like fever are fairly well known; heat has been shown to inhibit bacterial growth and cause infected cells to self-destruct. But what hasn't been clear is why pathogens should be more susceptible to this stress than the host.

LeGrand and Alcock offer some answers. For an infection to spread, pathogens need to multiply, whereas host cells can defer replication. Replication makes DNA and newly forming proteins much more susceptible to damage. It also requires energy and nutrientswhich helps explain the benefits of restricting food and sequestering nutrients.

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Why getting healthy can seem worse than getting sick

Biology students from Singapore Chinese Girls School got the experience of a lifetime when they toured the South West as part of a conservation camp last week.

Picture by Jon Gellweiler: Newton Moore Senior High School student Mackensie Jolly, centre, shows Singapore Chinese Girls School students Samantha Chin and Dinah Yosoff some South West wildlife.

Newton Moore Senior High School played host to the students as they travelled to all corners of the South West including Margaret River, Busselton and Bunbury.

The students had an actionpacked week of camping, night walking and their first encounter with dolphins at the discovery centre.

Fifteen-year-old Singapore student Samantha Chin said the week in WA was a fantastic learning experience.

I really enjoyed my time in Australia, Samantha said.

We learned a lot about the how the methods of conservation are used in the country.

Samantha said she was considering coming back to Bunbury upon graduation to further her science studies at Edith Cowan University Bunbury.

We got a tour of Edith Cowan nd it looks like a nice campus, she said.

The surf science course sounds really interesting.

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Singaporean students join in SW conservation camp

In a guest post at Scientific American's Lab Rat blog, iGEM-UANL team member Miguel Angel Loera Snchez discusses what he calls the "mainstream fronts of synthetic biology." These five fronts DNA synthesis, biological parts standardization, genetic code expansion, synthetic genetic circuits, and metabolic engineering have helped synthetic biology become "a fast growing and productive field," Snchez says. While much work remains to be done, the field "is attracting many smart and active young minds from different disciplines," he adds, leading him to believe that "the growth and innovation rate will likely increase in the years to come."

Meanwhile, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars's Synthetic Biology Project seeks to assess the societal impacts of advances in the field through a new public survey. The survey asks participants a variety of questions to investigate the ethical, legal, and social implications of synthetic biology research. "The results of this anonymous survey will be analyzed and compiled into a report, which will be released in mid- to late-May 2012," the Synthetic Biology Project group notes.

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Spotlight on Synthetic Biology

The findings were published in March in the online edition of the scientific journal Ecology Letters.

Bracken and Brown University student Natalie Low conducted several experiments that analyzed the impact of removing seaweed and sessile animals, such as mussels and barnacles, from the rocky shores of Northeasterns Marine Science Center in Nahant, Mass. The experiments were designed to mimic naturally occurring changes in biodiversity on rocky shores.

The findings were startling. We have shown that the loss of these extremely rare species which collectively represent less than 10 percent of the seaweed and animal biomass at the base of the food web causes major declines in the abundance and diversity of animals, such as snails, crabs and other mobile animals, Bracken said.

Prior research on the extirpation of rare species from a particular ecosystem focused on how the loss of top predators often referred to as keystone species affects plants and animals at the bottom of the food chain. Bracken and Low, on the other hand, have shown that the loss of rare species from the base of the food chain, which they call cornerstone species, can also reshape marine systems.

A pattern of decline emerged after only three weeks of experiments and persisted for the remainder of the fiveweek study. Previous work on the effects of rare predator removals took months to years to show strong effects, Bracken said. We found strong effects of rare seaweed removals after only a few weeks.

Provided by Northeastern University (news : web)

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Loss of rare species can harm ecosystems

Published: Monday, March 19, 2012 at 10:40 a.m. Last Modified: Monday, March 19, 2012 at 10:40 a.m.

Three Nicholls State University biology students took top honors for their research at a state-wide science convention that included universities from all over the state.

Derek Adams, David Samaha and Bijeta Prasai won first-place awards for presentations at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Academy of Sciences.

This is a very big deal, said Ramaraj Boopathy, the professor who guided the three students on their research. Even though our school is so small, we did better than a lot of places that are a lot bigger and have a lot more resources.

The three were selected by a panel of professors who judged each presenter on the quality and innovation of their research, the style of their presentation and ability to answer questions about their process.

Adams, a first-year masters degree student from New Orleans, topped the graduate microbiology research category with his paper Use of Formic Acid to Control Virbrosis in Shrimp.

When I was sitting there for the awards ceremony I thought Im just being a good representative of the university, Adams said. Then I hear my name, and I just couldnt believe it.

Adams research aims to find natural solutions to eradicating bacteria that kill shrimp, costing U.S. shrimpers.

Theres about $10 billion of shrimping in North America, and theres about a billion in damage, he said. Were hoping to find a way to reduce that margin of loss.

Samaha, a pre-med junior from Houma, won in the undergraduate environmental research category for his project, Fuel Grade Ethanol Production from Eastern Gamagrass.

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Nicholls biology students earn praise for research

Fremont senior Meagan Postema pipettes containers, preparing them for sporulation, for research in the Genetics Lab in Brooks Hall Wednesday morning. "I love what I do," said Postema. "I like the unexpected aspect of research and the opportunity to discover something new everyday." (Charlotte Bodak/Staff Photographer)

Sustainability, cleaner resources and a way to separate a biofuel supply from food supply have all been top-shelf issues for environmentalists in recent years.

Steven Gorsich, assistant professor of biology at Central Michigan University, is doing his part to resolve some of those issues; he and his lab team are taking a look at the ins and outs of biofuel production.

More specifically, theyre looking at ways to streamline the process.

Fremont senior Meagan Postema prepares containers for research under the Polymerase Chain Reaction hood in the Genetics Lab in Brooks Hall Wednesday morning. "I love what I do," said Postema. "I like the unexpected aspect of research and the opportunity to discover something new everyday." (Charlotte Bodak/Staff Photographer)

Most ethanol is made using cornstarch in a relatively simple reaction using yeast that yields biofuel. The problem with this method, though, is that it draws on food products to yield energy sources. Gorsichs project examines processes that use plant-based waste products like corn stubs, grass clippings and woodchips.

Using agriculture materials that are also used for food consumption by humans or livestock will increase the price of food at the supermarket, Gorsich said in an email. Using waste products to make ethanol is better, because it doesnt directly affect food cost.

The problem his lab is looking to overcome is that most of these materials are tougher than cornstarch and so their fermentation process requires an acid additive.

In order to get the sugars out of that, it requires a tougher pre-treatment, Gorsich said.

When the yeast starts to break down the plant material, the acids put a cap on the efficiency of the process. It results in what Gorsich refers to as oxidative damage, when oxidants (chemicals that adversely affect the fermentation process) like the acids are too high for the process to continue properly.

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Biology professor Steven Gorsich, students researching biofuel processes

This is a guest post from M. A. Loera Snchez from the iGEM team UANL 2012. I have carried out a few small grammar edits but otherwise the essay is all his work, and I would like to thank him for the opportunity to host it on my blog. All references are below the main text.

The mainstream fronts of synthetic biology

What I cannot build, I cannot understand.

This phrase by the genius physicist Richard Feynman is cleverly encrypted into the genetic code of the first bacterial cells with an artificial genome that have ever existed.

Actually the quote says what I cannot create, but maybe the scientists at the JCVI who are behind this tremendous breakthrough- preferred to save some base pairs to avoid the use of the word create and its tricky implications.They published this work in 2010 and opened a whole new world of possibilities and made it completely clear to anyone what we mean when we talk about Synthetic Biology and what its ultimate purpose should be: to understand life by building it.

Although the term Synthetic Biology has been around since the mid-1970s, the definition of it has been very vague: some people would call Synthetic Biology anything related to general genetic engineering procedures; others, perhaps more rightfully, would claim to be doing Synthetic Biology because of working with DNA synthesis or making bacteria behave like tiny computers. Even the 2010 report by the US Presidencial Comission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has to define the term considering different points of view (that of the molecular biology, the chemist and the engineer) and states that the activities related to Synthetic Biology are considered by some to be just extensions of already existing fields, like Molecular Biology, Genetic Engineering and Microbiology.

I remember (oh, the shame!) being skeptic about the possibility of something so oxymoronic being, well true. I still turn red when I recall that I kind of corrected the person who first said Synthetic Biology to me by telling her that what she wanted to say was maybe Systems Biology.

So what is it really?

Well, my work in Bio! has been devoted to dig into the deeps of Synthetic Biology and the iGEM competition, and throughout this time I began to notice what I would call the mainstream fronts of Synthetic Biology. These are the main orientations that so called Synthetic Biology projects would take and by enlisting them, I think it will be easier to clarify the distinctive characteristics of this field.

Front 1: DNA synthesis

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The mainstream fronts of Synthetic Biology: Guest post

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Biology students gather at Laurentian

Yes thats right, the famous segment often shown in the Dean Dome has taken on a new form the biology department has created its own version of the I am a Tar Heel video.

Kelly Hogan, a senior lecturer in the biology department, is the mastermind behind the video. She said she got the idea one day when she saw the original video in the Dean Dome with her husband, Brian Hogan, who is also a member of the faculty at UNC.

Its a powerful video, and the students especially love it. We envisioned a silly scenario of students going wild if professors were on the big screen at the game, Kelly Hogan said.

Kelly Hogans purpose with the video was to provide a sense of community, and show the students that the professors can have a bit of fun.

She intends to show the video at the departmental graduation ceremony in May.

She said that while the students might not go crazy when they see their professors on the board, it will give the students a little something to remember.

With the NCAA Tournament going on, students tend to pull a few sick days to watch basketball, but professors are just as excited about March Madness as we are.

Gregory Copenhaver, an associate professor in the biology department, said that the department has so much school spirit that they have to mop it off the floors.

Im pretty sure that our devotion to college basketball is so passionate that if we tried we would be eligible for tax-free status as a religion, Copenhaver said.

Jean Desaix, another senior lecturer in the biology department, reiterated the same sentiment.

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