sciences

Biochemistry Beats Biceps

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A beefcake pose doesn’t always a great male model make. Sometimes it takes a yeast two-hybrid trap for proteins. Two photos of Tanav Popli ’11 are featured on the video advertisement for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting (Tanav is pictured in slides 18 and 19, wearing a gray sweater with an argyle pattern).

The photos are from last year’s meeting in Washington, D.C., at which Tanav presented the results of his Senior Individualized Project work completed at University of California-San Francisco. His poster was titled: “Tmtc4 interacts with C3G, Wntless, and Zfhx4: a yeast two-hybrid trap for proteins associated with development of the corpus callosum.”

“I think he has returned to that USCF lab as a technician while he applies to medical school,” says Laura Furge, associate professor of chemistry. “There are three students that have just this week submitted abstracts to attend the 2012 meeting in San Diego,” she added.

They are: Mara Livezey ’13, Sandrine Zilikana ’12, and Lindsey Gaston ’12. Travel for students to this meeting is provided by a grant to Kalamazoo College from the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation.

Four Score

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FOUR teams of Kalamazoo College students finished among the top 10 at the 2012 Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition
Standing (l-r) are Huang, Mulder, Fink, and Song. Seated are Adhikari, Hoang, and Esman.

By Maggie Kane ’13

Add ‘em up: FOUR teams of Kalamazoo College students finished among the top 10 at the 2012 Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition, with one K team bringing home the top prize. The three-hour competition held April 14 at Calvin College in Grand Rapids pitted multiple teams from 10 colleges against each other.

The ten-question exam “involved all branches of mathematics that undergraduates are familiar with,” said Rosemary K. Brown Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science John Fink, who accompanied the teams to the competition. He said unlike other colleges, K teams don’t practice before competitions because of their busy schedules.

“It’s like pickup soccer to them,” Fink said of his students, “Except they are people who like to play recreational mathematics.”

The K team of Dan Esman ’12, Trung Hoang ’12, Hang Nguyen ’14 took first place with a perfect score of 100. It’s the second straight year a K team has brought home the top trophy. Jinyuan Huang ’14,Renjie Song ’13, and Jiakan Wang ’13, finished third. Utsav Adhikari ’14, Sajan Silwal ’14, and Mojtaba Tafti ’15 finished sixth. The two-person team of Philip Mulder ’15 and Umang Varma ’14 finished ninth.

Two Earn Luce Scholarships

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Luce Scholarship winners Lauren Wierenga and Erica DominicClass of 2013 members Lauren Wierenga (left) and Erica Dominic have been selected to receive prestigious Clare Boothe Luce Scholarships for Women in Science and Engineering. The scholarships will cover tuition for each quarter they are enrolled on campus during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 academic years.

Erica Dominic, from Farmington Hills, Mich., is pursuing a double major in mathematics and English. She is a teaching assistant for a calculus class and works at the College’s Math and Physics Academic Resource Center as a math peer consultant. Through the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service-Learning, she tutors elementary and middle school students in math. During summer 2010, Erica participated in a math Research Experience for Undergraduates at Michigan State University. During the upcoming fall and winter terms, she’ll study at the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland.

Lauren Wierenga, from Grand Rapids, is pursuing a biology major and math minor with a concentration in biophysics. She is co-leader of Kalamazoo’s student organization Sisters in Science, and is a member of the Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team. During summer 2010, she interned at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md. This summer, she will intern for nine weeks in the Princeton University molecular biology department. In the fall, she will attend Kalamazoo’s Budapest Semester in Cognitive Science at Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary. Eötvös is Hungary’s premier science and liberal arts university.

The Clare Boothe Luce (CBL) program is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Since its first grants in 1989, CBL has become the single most significant source of private support for women in science, mathematics and engineering. Thus far, the program has supported more than 1,500 women.

Clare Boothe Luce was a playwright, journalist, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut. In her bequest establishing this program, she sought “to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach” in science, mathematics and engineering.

Kalamazoo College was invited to apply by the Henry Luce Foundation, and was selected to receive the scholarships based on evidence of its strength in science and engineering, and of its commitment to Mrs. Luce’s vision of increasing the representation of women in these areas. Three Kalamazoo students received CBL scholarships in 2002, and three more in 2003. Additionally, Associate Professor of Mathematics Michele Intermont received a Clare Boothe Luce scholarship during her graduate school days at University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Ind.

Science Grant Benefits Breast Cancer Research

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Professor Furchak at Dow with four chemistry majors
Professor Furchak in the Dow Science Building with Kalamazoo chemistry majors (l-r) Vinay Sharma ’12, Lydia Manger ’13, Eric Glanz ’13, and Amy Ong ’11

Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Assistant Professor of Chemistry Jennifer R. Furchak has received a 2011 Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. She will use the $35,000 award to further her work into the development of a multiplexed assay for the analysis of breast cancer metastasis.

“The potential impact of this work in detection and understanding of breast cancer metastasis lies in improvements in simplicity, accuracy, and speed over current methods, which could allow for improved patient treatment and prognoses,” she said. “Ultimately, additional sample throughput will result in better understanding of disease progression.”

According to Furchak, five student researchers at “K” have worked on this project thus far. It’s been the foundation for three completed Senior Independent Projects, and another is in progress this summer. Furchak’s grant is one of 48 Cottrell grants this year totaling $1.8 million and intended to support early career scientists at liberal arts colleges and primarily undergraduate universities.

Undergraduate students must be involved in the research in meaningful ways. Founded in 1912, Research Corporation for Science Advancement is the second-oldest foundation in the United States and the oldest foundation for science advancement.

Five “K” Students Compete in Poster Presentation for ASBMB

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Five Kalamazoo College students
Left to Right: Popli, Nagy, Diffenderfer, Parson, and McNamara

Kalamazoo College enjoyed a strong scientific presence at the Washington, D.C. meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). Associate Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge served as a judge in the 15th Annual Undergraduate Poster Competition, in which five “K” students competed against more than 200 other undergraduates from throughout the country.

Laura Diffenderfer ’11 presented a poster titled “Autodock as a method for predicting binding for substrates and inhibitors of human cytochrome P450 2D6,” based on a sliver of the research she’s conducted for the past two years in Furge’s lab. Diffenderfer plans to attend Wayne State Medical School this fall. Alyssa McNamara ’11, a four-year denizen in the lab of chemistry professor Regina Stevens-Truss, presented “Suramin discriminates between the calmodulin-binding sites of neuronal and inducible nitric oxide synthase.” She will work for the Schuler Family Foundation in Chicago before she enrolls in medical school in 2012.

Leslie Nagy ’09 and Diffenderfer presented “Mechanism-based inhibition of human cytochrome P450 2D6 by Schering 66712,” work recently accepted for publication in Drug Metabolism and Disposition. Nagy is completing a two-year appointment as a laboratory research associate in Furge’s lab.

Tanav Popli ’11 presented a poster based on his SIP work at University of California-San Francisco. His poster was titled “Tmtc4 interacts with C3G, Wntless, and Zfhx4: a yeast two-hybrid trap for proteins associated with development of the corpus callosum.” Tanov plans to work in a laboratory after graduation and then apply for an M.D./Ph.D. program.

Emily Parson ’11 presented a poster titled “Characterization of a real time PCR assay for the detection and quantification of Plasmodium malariae parasites.” She did her SIP, which was based in part on her study abroad experience in Kenya, at the Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Research Unit in Washington, D.C. After she graduates this spring, Emily will return to Walter Reed to continue research in related areas.

“Attendance at a national meeting is a tremendous opportunity for students to hear and meet leading scientists, to see how scientists share ideas with each other, and to see how scientific research accumulates and allows for the formation of new hypotheses,” said Furge.

And it’s an opportunity that depends on philanthropy. Student travel to this meeting was supported by a grant to “K” from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Popli received a travel award from the Undergraduate Affiliation Network of Kalamazoo College headed by Stevens-Truss. Stevens-Truss organized the first annual ASBMB workshop titled: “Fostering Partnerships Between Colleges/Universities and Junior High School Teachers,” and she noted that it got off the ground despite her absence due to and airline grounding. “I was disappointed to miss the workshop when my flight was grounded in Kalamazoo,” said Stevens-Truss. “But I’m glad the idea is now a successful reality.”

The second offering of the workshop will occur next April in San Diego.

SIPs into Published Works: Alumni Collaborate in Research

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When alumni mentor seniors doing their Senior Individualized Projects it can lead to co-authorship of published papers. The proof: Rebecca (Becky) Tonietto ’05 and Katherine (Katie) Ellis ’09. The two are coauthors of the paper “A comparison of bee communities of Chicago green roofs, parks and prairies,” which appeared in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning 103 (2011) 102-108.

Tonietto was a mentor for Ellis during the latter’s SIP, and the published article includes results from Katie’s senior research. Tonietto is working on a Ph.D. in plant biology and conservation at Northwestern University. According to Associate Professor of Biology Ann Fraser, the biology department has many examples of alumni serving as SIP mentors for seniors, “and entomology has been an especially fruitful area for this kind of collaboration,” she added.

Alum Vicky Minderhout Receives “Professor of the Year”

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Vicky Minderhout ’72, a professor of chemistry at Seattle University, was named the State of Washington’s “Professor of the Year” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She was one of 27 state-level winners in 2011; four others were national-level winners. Minderhout was cited for her innovations in teaching, particularly biochemistry.

“Her research in Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning as applied to biochemistry has been a national model for many years now,” said Associate Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge,“I have met Vicky many times, and always introduce my students to her when we see her at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology meetings.”

ASBMB’s newsletter, ASBMB Today, published an interview with Minderhout in which she was questioned about teachers who influenced her classroom methods. In her answer she describes a quantum mechanics class that was taught by Associate Professor of Chemistry Ralph Deal. She also cites the enthusiasm that characterized Professor of Chemistry Kurt Kaufman’s interactive lectures. King TV in Seattle did a feature story on Minderhout’s Socratic style that includes the voices of many of her students.

“We Were Googled!”

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Study co-authors Kelly Usakoski, Jeff Bartz and Nic West.
Study co-authors (l-r): Kelly Usakoski, Jeff Bartz; and Nic West.

Or—alternate headline: “How to Ruin a Spring Break.” Though Professor of Chemistry Jeff Bartz quickly notes that the ruination was sweet indeed, given that it led to the publication of a paper in the The Journal of Chemical Physics (September 7, 2011) on which he and two students—Nic West ’12and Kelly Usakoski ’14—are co-authors.

The story begins last spring break when Bartz was getting ready for the start of a new term. Scientists in the department of chemistry at Texas A&M wanted to do an experiment on molecular imaging, and to start they did a literature search seeking similar experiments. In that search they discovered an abstract of experimental work West had presented in June 2010 at the 65th International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy at the Ohio State University.

They contacted Kalamazoo College—“We’d been Googled!” laughs Bartz.

Thus began a research collaboration on further imaging experimentation that culminated in this month’s publication of “A method for the determination of speed-dependent semi-classical vector correlations form sliced image anisotropies.” The paper involves work that Usakoski performed in Bartz’ lab during spring quarter 2011.

In addition to his on-campus contributions to the partnership last spring, West also traveled in the summer to A&M’s College Station campus and conducted related work that is the basis of his Senior Individualized Project. And Bartz “lost” a spring break to the start-up of the “K” and A&M research collaboration. “It was well worth it,” he says. Pictured are the study’s three Kalamazoo College co-authors (l-r): Kelly Usakoski, who is considering declaring her major in either chemistry or physics this year; Jeff Bartz; and Nic West, a chemistry and physics double major.