biology

K Alumna Describes Her Whale Science in Video Submission

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Ellen Chenoweth ’08, a doctoral student and MESAS Fellow at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, has entered a video contest (National Science Foundation IGERT Video and Poster Competition).

Her entry explains her scientific work with humpback whales and salmon in Alaska and includes wonderful footage of both. It also features some humorous footage and metaphors to make the science accessible to lay audiences.

Humpback whales compete with the Alaska fishing industry for hatchery salmon. Chenoweth seeks to understand the energy expended by humpbacks to secure their other food sources. This information may eventually assist salmon hatchery release procedures in order to make food sources other than salmon more efficient for the whales, thus reducing whale-human competition for salmon fishing, which is vital to the economy of coastal Alaska.

Says Chenoweth: “Anyone can vote in the public choice category and you can vote for as many different videos as you want.”

If her submission wins the contest, she’ll use the prize to attend Marine Mammal Conference in December.

Strong K Presence at National Science Meeting

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Six students presented research work at the annual ASBMB meeting
Six students presented research work at the annual ASBMB meeting. From left: Josh Abbott, Erran Briggs, Amanda Bolles, Mara Livezey, Michael Hicks, and Nic Sweda. Hicks is a biology major; the other five are majoring in chemistry.

Six Kalamazoo College students joined two of their chemistry professors and mentors (Regina Stevens-Truss and Laura Lowe Furge) at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology National Meeting in Boston, Mass. The students–Nicholas Sweda ’13, Mara Livezey ’13, Michael Hicks ’13, Josh Abbott ’13, Amanda Bolles ’14, and Erran Briggs ’14–presented results of their summer and academic year research experiences (Senior Individualized Projects in the cases of Nick and Josh). Nearly 300 posters from colleges across the country were part of the 17th Annual Undergraduate Student Research Poster Competition and Professional Development Workshop. Professor Furge was a judge in the competition.

The lab of Professor Paul Hollenberg at the University of Michigan was the site of Abbott’s SIP research on the role of CYP2B6 metabolism of the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide. The other five posters were based on research done at Kalamazoo College. Sweda presented ongoing studies from Professor Stevens-Truss’s lab on suramin selective inhibition of nitric oxide synthases. This work is the basis of a manuscript in preparation with Sweda and Alyssa McNamara ’11 as co-authors. Livezey, Hicks, Bolles, and Briggs each presented individual posters with results of three projects from Professor Furge’s lab on the interactions of inhibitors with human cytochrome P450 enzymes. The work presented by Bolles and Briggs is currently being prepared in a manuscript for publication with both students as co-authors along with Livezey. The posters presented by Hicks and Livezey are the basis of current NIH-funded studies in the Furge lab. In addition to the poster sessions, students attended talks, award lectures, and exhibits. Students also met with graduate school recruiters.

During the meeting, Professor Stevens-Truss directed her third annual teaching workshop for middle school and high school science teachers in the Boston area. The workshop attracted more than 70 teacher-participants from the Boston area, a record number for these ASBMB associated events. Professor Stevens-Truss’s efforts in structuring the workshops have provided a new platform for scientists to collaborate and mentor the nation’s secondary school science teachers. Scientists from across the country helped make the workshop a meaningful experience for school teachers. It was funded by a National Science Foundation grant to Stevens-Truss. Next year’s meeting will be in San Diego, Calif., and K expects to be there.

Kalamazoo College Senior Faiza Fayyaz Is a YWCA Young Woman of Achievement

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Kalamazoo College senior Faiza Fayyaz
Faiza Fayyaz ′13 with one of her students at KRESA Young Adult Program at West Campus school in Kalamazoo.

Kalamazoo College senior Faiza Fayyaz has received a 2013 YWCA Young Women of Achievement Award and will be honored at the 29th annual YWCA Women of Achievement Award Celebration, on Tuesday, May 21, 5:30 p.m. at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites in Kalamazoo.

The YWCA Young Women of Achievement Awards are given to high school and college age women in the Kalamazoo community who have records of accomplishment in academic studies and extracurricular activities, have made significant contributions to their school and/or community, demonstrate leadership ability, and exemplify qualities of character and thought consistent with the mission and vision of the YWCA.

Faiza will soon earn her B.A. degree in biology with a minor in psychology and a concentration in health sciences. She has also been a biology research assistant at Western Michigan University. Outside the classroom, Faiza has been active in student organizations Active Minds (focusing on mental health issues among college students) and KDesi (working to preserve and promote South Asian cultures and religions on the K campus and in the surrounding community).

Through the College′s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service Learning, Faiza has also spent many hours engaged with students from the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency (KRESA) Young Adult Program at West Campus school, She has also been engaged in civic activities at Borgess Hospital and in a local physical therapy clinic.

Earlier this month, the YWCA announced that Kalamazoo College trustee Ronda Stryker is its recipient of the Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award.

Lamprey Research Unlocks Secrets of Vertebrate Evolution

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The work of biology professor James Langeland, as part of a large international consortium, was published in the journal Nature Genetics, one of the top 10 science journals worldwide.

Langeland has been part of the consortium working on sequencing and elucidating the genome of the sea lamprey (the simplest of living vertebrates and a species on which Langeland has worked for 16 years).

The title of the article is “Sequencing of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) genome provides insights into vertebrate evolution.” The paper is the first presentation of lamprey whole-genome sequence and assembly. Lampreys represent an ancient vertebrate lineage that diverged from our own some 500 millions year ago. Scientists have studied the sea lamprey genome to gain insights into the ancestry of vertebrate genomes, the underlying principles of vertebrate biology, and evolutionary events that have shaped the genomes of existing organisms.

Langeland is the Upjohn Professor of Life Sciences at Kalamazoo College.

K alumna is both medical student and medical detective

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Medical student Sarah Allexan
Medical student and sleuth, Sarah Allexan ’11

Sarah Allexan ’11 is the lead author of a research paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics that looks into the cause of blindness in Mary Ingalls, older sister of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the popular “Little House” book series.

Ingalls Wilder wrote that Scarlet Fever caused her sister to lose her eyesight. Allexan and her research team determined otherwise. Their findings have attracted a lot of news media attention, including an article in USA Today and an article in the New York Times. Sarah also participated in an interview with WMUK radio (102.1 FM), the NPR affiliate at Western Michigan University.

Originally from Englewood, Colo., while at K, Sarah majored in biology, studied abroad in Ecuador, ran on the Hornet cross country team, and sang in the Limelights student a cappella group. She also served as a bi-lingual tutor for first-graders at a Kalamazoo Public School, and completed both an internship at the Seattle Aquarium and an externship at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

Shortly after her K commencement, she took a job as a research assistant at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While there, she became involved in the Ingalls research project.

“It was fun tracing Laura’s journey and playing medical detective,” Sarah said. “This was my first real exposure to lineal reasoning and prepared me well for medical school.”

Sarah is now enrolled at University of Colorado School of Medicine. “But I bleed ‘Orange and Black!’” she said.

 

Charles Holmes, MD ’93 Leads Effort to Combat Infectious Disease in Zambia

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Kalamazoo College alumnus Charles Homes speaking at a lecturn
Charles Holmes, MD ’93 has “a legacy of listening to, and using science, say long-time Washington workers in the AIDS response.”

Charles Holmes ’93 was completing his medical education when he lived and worked for three months in Malawi in 1999. The AIDS epidemic there, uncontrolled, was peaking. Desperately sick people lay three to a bed in the Lilongwe hospital where Holmes worked, and where the best medicine on hand could only alleviate their agony until they died.

“Deaths were an hourly occurrence,” he said later. “It was an important and formative experience for me to be a firsthand witness to that tragedy.”

It has shaped his work and interests ever since, he added.

This month, he packed his bags for Africa again, to lead the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, widely considered one of the most effective in-country programs to improve health care capacities in a resource-poor country.

Read more about this Kalamazoo College graduate’s work in Science Speaks: HIV and TB News, a project of the Center for Global Health Policy.

K Alumna Wins Prize for Science Journalism

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Kirsten Weir ’99 is the winner of the 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the children’s science news category. The awards are administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for professional journalists to honor distinguished reporting for a general audience. Weir received the award for her article “Uninvited Guests,” which appeared in the April/May 2012 issue of Current Health Kids. In a way that appeals to children and adults the article describes the parasites and microbes that live in and on our bodies. Said Weir: “Kids often seem to think that science is something that happens in a laboratory or a faraway place. I loved that this story underscored how much is still unknown about the organisms living right under our noses (not to mention the rest of our bodies).”

K Science Majors Present at Undergraduate Research Conference

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Six students who presented at the West Michigan Regional Undergraduate Science Research Conference
Scientific presenters at the West Michigan Regional Undergraduate Science Research Conference included (l-r): Carline Dugue, Josh Abbott, Amanda Bolles, Mara Livezey, Kelly Bresnahan, and Chelsea Wallace. Not pictured are Erran Briggs, Michael Hicks, Nicolas Sweda, and Associate Professors of Chemistry Laura Lowe Furge and Regina Stevens-Truss.

Nine Kalamazoo College science majors and two chemistry department faculty members (Regina Stevens-Truss and Laura Lowe Furge) attended the recent West Michigan Regional Undergraduate Science Research Conference in Grand Rapids. The students were Carline Dugue ’12, Chelsea Wallace ’13, Nicholas Sweda ’12, Mara Livezey ’13, Michael Hicks ’12, Kelly Bresnahan ’12, Josh Abbott ’12, Amanda Bolles ’14, and Erran Briggs ’14. Hicks and Wallace are biology majors; the others are majoring in chemistry. They presented results of their summer and academic year research experiences, including Senior Individualized Project work for Dugue, Bresnahan, Sweda, and Abbott. More than 170 posters from colleges across West Michigan were part of the conference’s poster session, and some 400 people participated in the conference. Dugue’s research focused on semiconductor quantum dots and charge transfer; she worked with Western Michigan University professor Sherine Obare. Abbott’s work focused on the role of a specific liver enzyme (CYP2B6) in the way the body processes the cancer drug cyclophosphamide. He did this work in the lab of Professor Paul Hollenberg at the University of Michigan. Bresnahan completed her SIP at the University of Michigan laboratory of Professor James Woods. She worked on animal models for testing of molecules called cholinergic receptor agonists for aid in smoking cessation studies. The other six posters described research done at Kalamazoo College. Sweda presented ongoing studies from Professor Stevens-Truss’s lab on suramin selective inhibition of nitric oxide synthases, part of a chain of events that affects production of nitric oxide in the human body. An excess of nitric oxide is associated with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. This work is the basis of a manuscript in preparation with Sweda and Alyssa McNamara ’11 as co-authors. Wallace’s research (with Associate Professor of Biology Blaine Moore) showed that BCL-2 is able to rescue neuroblastoma cells from ethanol toxicity. Livezey, Hicks, Bolles, and Briggs each presented individual posters with results of three projects from Professor Furge’s lab on the interactions of inhibitors with human cytochrome P450 enzymes. These enzymes metabolize compounds, including medicines, in the liver, and the inhibition of those enzymes may influence the effectiveness of current and new medicines. The work presented by Bolles and Briggs is currently being prepared in a manuscript for publication with both students as co-authors along with Livezey. The posters presented by Hicks and Livezey are the basis of a current NIH grant renewal to support ongoing opportunities for student research in the Furge lab. In addition to the poster sessions, students attended several lectures and were able to meet with graduate school recruiters.

K Grad Studies Desert Fish With a Far Eye Cast to Cancer

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Claire Riggs ’11 received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation, a prestigious award that allows her to continue research on killifish embryos as she works on her doctorate at Portland State University. Her research was the subject of an article (“Life in the Extreme”) by Maya Seaman that appeared in the publication, Vanguard. Killifish embryos can survive pretty tough conditions–in extreme heat, without water, and, believe it or not, without oxygen. Riggs studies the role of the fish embryos’ microDNA in their ability to go dormant and survive in anoxic environments. For killifish embryos, such dormancy is characterized by a reduction of metabolism, inhibition of cell development, and stoppage of the heart beat … up to 90 days … without harm! Clues to how this process works, should it ever prove applicable to humans, could eventually have important potential for cancer therapy and treatment of heart attack and stroke.

“I Went to Kalamazoo College!”

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Dan Blustein, Joel Haas, and Tess Killpack have a great deal in common. They’re classmates (2006); they’re working on their doctorates; and they’re finalists in a video contest! “Dan entered us in an NSF fellows video contest (of course he did…),” wrote Tess to Professor of Biology Paul Sotherland, “and we made it to the finals.” The contest celebrates the 60th anniversary of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Dan, Joel, and Tess share that too; each is an NSF GRF. The title of their video is “Sharing Our NSF GRF Skills With the World.” “We took a little different approach from most of the other entries and did a collaborative entry filming on our own and working over the Internet,” said Dan. “Judges pick winners, and there is one People’s Choice award determined by online votes.” There’s great variety in their research work and geographic dispersion—robot lobsters, cellular energy balance, and avian immune system development, in Boston, San Francisco, and Madison (Wis.) for Dan, Joel, and Tess, respectively. In true K fashion, they do much more than their research. Each works on issues important to science and society, including effective teaching, diversity in the sciences, and scientific policy. Congratulations, Dan, Joel, and Tess. And good luck in the finals.