2005 Archived News
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- December 13, 2005
Daniela Cimini (who will be joining our department on December 25,) won an award for a cell movie contest organized by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). The award was officially presented during the 45th ASCB annual meeting and consisted of $500 plus free meeting registration. (movie clips)
- The National Endowment for the Humanities has renewed its grant for the Darwin Correspondence Project for three years (2005-08) for $230,000. The Principal Investigator is Duncan M. Porter, Professor of Botany, and the grant is administered through the American Council of Learned Societies. Duncan M. Porter gave a seminar at the University of New Hampshire on 10 November. Its title is "Why did Wallace write to Darwin? And other discoveries by the Darwin Correspondence Project."
Mohannad Al-Saghir of the Porter lab has received a grant of $1,124 from the Virginia Academy of Science for the project "Phylogenetic Analysis of The Genus Pistacia based on matK Sequences."
- October 16th, 2005
Chelsea Black, an undergraduate working in Dr. Hilu's lab, attended the Virginia Academy of Science Undergraduate Conference , presented her poster "Molecular study of peanut allergen Ara h 2 across wild peanut species." Chelsea was one six undergraduates who were awarded a $500 grant for their proposals/posters, and was the only recepient from Virginia Tech.
- September 9-10, 2005
Dr. Khidir Hilu presented the opening talk entitled: "A Century of Progress in Grass Systematics," a special symposium on grasses at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England. The Celebration of Grasses symposium was sponsored by the London Linnean Society and the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew.
- July 2005
Dr. Khidir Hilu and collaborators from the US and Europe presented three invited talks and two posters at the International Botanical Congress held in Vienna this July 2005. This large meeting is held once every six years.
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Anya Hinkle joined Hilu's lab as a postdoctoral fellow. She received her Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley. Anya is funded by Dr. Hilu's National Science Foundation collaborative award for the Tree of Life project.
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Sheena Friend received a 2005 grant from the Virginia Academy of Science for $1200 to support her research on the molecular evolution of the allergen genes in peanut and its related wild species. Sheena is doing her Masters degree with Dr. Khidir Hilu.
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Michelle Barthet, a graduate student in Hilu's lab, was one of nine students selected to receive a $500 research award from the Botanical Society of America. Michelle will use the award to support her Ph.D. research.
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Hilu's abroad summer class "Botanizing the Alps" was a success. Twelve students travelled to Germany, the Swiss Alps, and the Italian Mediterranean region. He would love to see graduate students joining on this wonderful academic and cultural experiences. -
LAWRENCE AIDS SEARCH FOR CAUSES OF LUNG AILMENTS - Department of Biological Sciences and Virginia Bioinformatics Associate Professor Chris Lawrence, Ph.D. has established a consortium with researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN to investigate the role of fungi in chronic airway disease. Data generated over the last few years by Dr. Hirohito Kita, M.D. and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic and University of Buffalo Medical School strongly suggest that airborne fungi play a major role in the development of chronic airway diseases in particular asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Moreover, the main fungus that appears to be most strongly associated with this phenomenon is Alternaria. Last year Dr. Lawrence received a grant from the NSF-USDA Interagency Microbial Genome Sequencing Program to sequence and annotate the genome of one species of Alternaria. Another grant awarded in 2002 by the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Program centered on functional genomics has allowed Dr. Lawrence to develop technology for manipulating Alternaria at the molecular level. He has been using the set of predicted proteins obtained from the Alternaria genome sequence and other Alternaria-related technologies to aid researchers at Mayo in identifying fungal proteins that have a profound effect on the human immune system using a technique called proteomics that is also coupled with immunological experiments. more…(pdf)
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9-21-05 - Liwu Li recently attended a meeting during September 21st to 25th on innate immunity held at the Oxford University Sir William Dunn School of Pathology England, and presented a talk entitled “Novel role and regulation of innate immunity signaling”.
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8-29-05 - Betsey Waterman and Llyn Sharp recognized as Virginia Tech's Employees of the Week. more...
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June 2005 - Published Article - The Plant Journal, Vol. 42, No. 5 - Dorothea Tholl, Feng Chen, Jana Petri, Jonathan Gershenzon and Eran Pichersky
"Two sesquiterpene synthases are responsible for the complex mixture of sesquiterpenes emitted from Arabidopsis flowers"
Summary - Despite the fact that Arabidopsis is largely self-pollinating, its flowers emit a complex mixture of terpene volatiles consisting predomin-antly of a large group of over 20 sesquiterpenes. Here we report that only two terpene synthases, encoded by the florally expressed genes At5g23960 and At5g44630, are more..... -
April 2005 - Published Article - Animal Behaviour, 2005, 69, 1325-1336 - T.A. Jenssen, K.R. DeCourcy, & J.D. Congdon -
"Assessment in contests of male lizards (Anolis carolinensis): how should smaller males respond when size matters?
Summary - see photo
Not unlike people, most species of animals engage in conflict resolution because there is frequently competition over limited resources (e.g. attracting or defending mates, controlling quality food supplies and shelters). Resolution is usually accomplished by some form of aggression, such as forming and defending territories to settle ownership of resources. Tom Jenssen has been using the territorial behavior of green anole males (the common green lizard of southeast U.S.) to study more -
4-22-05 - Brian Olsen recently received the Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship Award, which consists of a $20,000 stipend awarded from May 1, 2005 until April 30, 2006. He will also be traveling to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park to conduct research with Zoo Biologists Russell Greenberg and Robert Fleischer. His project will examine how the mating system of two sub-species of the Swamp Sparrow has diverged using DNA microsatellites to evaluate rates of extra-pair fertilization.
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3-15-05 - Brent Opell has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the design, diversity, and function of viscous prey capture threads that are produced by over 4000 species of orb-weaving spiders. These sticky threads are formed of small adhesive droplets suspended on elastic fibers and serve to retain insects that strike a web.
Over the course of three years, a series of investigations will determine what adhesive forces contribute to droplet stickiness, how these forces are recruited by fibers in a manner that resists crack propagation, and how droplet size, plasticity, and spacing optimize thread adhesion. These studies will also examine how well threads with different droplet profiles and webs with different thread spacing retain insect that have different surfaces characteristics. This will be accomplished by measuring the stickiness and physical features of threads, developing models that describe thread performance, conducting a phylogenetic survey of the features of threads and webs, and correlating thread and web features with insect retention times. These complementary approaches will explain how viscous thread operates as an integrated adhesive system that recruits the compound adhesion of discrete units and resists crack prorogation, a set of serious challenges to both natural and manufactured adhesive systems. The principles and insights from these studies may help materials scientists develop new products and applications. These studies will also show how viscous thread features and web architecture are integrated to enhances prey capture and how this may facilitate prey specialization by orb-weaving spiders. These are important issues, as spiders are key predators in natural ecosystems and are receiving increasing attention as agents of biological insect control.
- Michael Rosenzweig, Director of the Science Outreach Program, will collaborate in this project to help develop a series of educational exercises that will involve grade school and high school students in field and laboratory studies. These exercises will show students how to use microscopes, digital cameras, computer programs, and simple, homemade instruments to collect data, transform and scale measurements, and analyze data on the features of spider orb-webs and their threads. These exercises will be made freely available through the Internet in an effort to engage as many students as possible in the study of natural history, evolutionary biology, and functional systems.
- 3-3-05 - Jack Cranford is featured on the university advising page. Check it out: http://www.advising.vt.edu/
- 2-22-05 - Robert Jones (Biological Sciences), Carola Haas (Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences) and Tom Fox (Forestry) have received a $624,000 grant from the USDA to study the impacts of forest management activities on biological diversity and ecosystems processes in Appalachian Forests.
In the central Appalachian Mountains, forests harbor relatively high levels of biodiversity, but they also contain valuable natural resources including timber, clean water, medicinal herbs and other non-timber resources, not to mention tremendous recreation opportunities. Removal of resources may have negative impacts on biodiversity, and perhaps on key ecosystem functions such as the retention of nutrients. To minimize the negative consequences of such impacts, a variety of forest management schemes that remove some trees but retain others have been developed in Europe, and applied to forests in the United States. However, no long-term, systematic investigations have yet occurred to determine how and why these various schemes influence forest ecosystem behavior. A team of scientists, led by Drs. Haas, Fox and Jones, are addressing this issue in a study replicated in seven locations in Virginia and West Virginia. They will determine how a gradient of disturbances from none (i.e., no tree harvest) through clearcutting influences a variety of ecosystem components including understory plant diversity, abundance and diversity of salamanders, the function of salamanders as top predators in the forest litter, decomposition and nutrient cycling, population biology of rare and important understory herbs, and invasion of the forest by non-native species.
- 2-21-05 - Tom Wieboldt and Rob Hunter have completed development of a Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora and made it available over the World Wide Web via the Biology Department's server.
- A group of Virginia botanists known as the Virginia Botanical Associates (VBA), have been working for several years to revise an earlier hardcopy Atlas of the Virginia Flora. Numerous changes in plant classification and nomenclature brought about by the "revolution" in molecular systematics have been part of the impetus for a "modern" atlas. The Digital Atlas allows continual updating in this rapidly changing science. In addition, Tom Wieboldt has been workingwith VBA to incorporate additions to the flora as well as thousands of new distributional records. Nearly 700 species and infraspecific taxa have been added to the previous hardcopy edition. The Digital Atlas is unique in providing information specific to Virginia for many plants. Additional comments and habitat descriptions are planned. Rob Hunter has been instrumental in developing the web interface allowing nearly instant access to the present knowledge of Virginia's flora. This is an important development for the Flora of Virginia Project with whom VBA has a memorandum of agreement to provide up-to-date distributional information, and for the Flora of North America whose hundreds of contributing authors may now easily access the information necessary to well represent our state in its forthcoming volumes.
- 2-10-05 - Brenda Winkel (Biological Sciences) has received a $460,000 grant from NSF's Molecular Biochemistry Program to continue characterizing the structure and subcellular localization of the flavonoid multi-enzyme complex in Arabidopsis thaliana. Co-PI Erin Dolan (Biochemistry) will carry out an associated study on the impact of NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate supplements on the careers of the 35 undergraduates who have done research in the Winkel lab over the past 12 years.
Interactions between biological macro-molecules underlie virtually every cellular process, including the organization of cooperating enzymes into macromolecular complexes. Multienzyme systems provide the means to attain high local substrate concentrations, regulate competition among branch pathways, coordinate the activities of interdependent pathways, and sequester toxic or volatile intermediates within the cell. Yet remarkably little is known about the architecture of any enzyme complex or the molecular mechanisms that direct the interaction of the individual components. The project will build on previous work in the Winkel laboratory to characterize the structure and function of the flavonoid enzyme complex in Arabidopsis thaliana, including the use of small angle neutron scattering to develop a three-dimensional model of this system. Several new technologies for studying interaction interfaces will be tested in an effort to confirm proposed interactions in planta, and to identify factors that may arbitrate assembly of the complex. The determinants of the recently-discovered differential localization of flavonoid enzymes will also be characterized. These studies will contribute to a general understanding of how macromolecular interactions occur with the requisite specificity and flexibility to effectively mediate biological processes in the crowded and dynamic cell interior. This knowledge is essential for the effective application of metabolic engineering to the agronomic and nutritional improvement of plants; the bioproduction of valuable metabolites in micro-organisms, plants, and animals; and gene therapy.