News
Dr. Ji-Xin Cheng Receives Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award
This summer, Dr. Ji-Xin Cheng received a Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award (MIRA) for $2.9 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue his work. Investigators receive MIRAs after a successful use of the NIH’s top research grant, the R01—the MIRA is a type of extension on that grant that allows researchers to build on their work.
Read the full announcement here.
Dr. Sean Elliott Published in Nature Communications
Dr. Sean Elliott recently published a paper in Nature Communications titled "A widely distributed diheme enzyme from Burkholderia that displays an atypically stable bis-Fe(IV) state."
“The work illustrates how if we look at the microbial world, enzyme continue to surprise us with how inventive they can be with chemical transformations,” says Sean Elliott. “If we can understanding the wiring, we’ll be able to re-wire these catalysts to do the reactions we need them for.”
Read the full announcement here.
Dr. Ahmad Khalil Featured in The Brink
Dr. Ahmad Khalil was awarded a 2020 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship—the Department of Defense’s most prestigious award for a single investigator—to explore how cells are capable of passing “memories” down to the next generation of offspring cells, a dynamic known as epigenetic memory. With his work supported by the fellowship, Khalil will discover how to manipulate epigenetic memory in cells to program self-assembling biological materials, like tissue and other cellular structures.
Read the full Brink article here.
Michael Zulch Accepted into Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology (SB2) Predoctoral Training Program
Michael Zulch of the Larkin Lab was recently accepted into the 2020 Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology (SB2) Predoctoral Training Program cohort. The goals of the SB2 Program are to provide a unique, field-defining, and interdisciplinary training environment in synthetic biology. Participating graduate programs include: Biomedical Engineering, Bioinformatics, and Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry.
Michael is interested in understanding the spatial organization of prokaryotic cells and their phenotypes in multicellular systems, and how this organization leads to emergent behaviors. He plans on investigating this using a multifaceted approach which includes next-generation single-cell sequencing, fluorescence microscopy, as well as bioengineering and synthetic biology.
Congratulations, Michael!
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Awardees & Honorable Mentions
The awardees and honorable mentions for the 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) competition have been posted! MCBB is exited to announce that Marisol Dothard of the Finnerty and Segrè labs was awarded a three-year graduate research fellowship, and Abigail Descoteaux of the Bradham Lab received an honorable mention.
Marisol's research interests lie primarily in investigating the role that microbial communities may play in the survival of corals in refuge habitats in Belize. She is excited to work closely with undergraduate students at both BU and the University of Belize in the field and in the lab.
In the Bradham Lab, Abigail studies pattern formation and skeletogenesis using Lytechinus variegatus as a model organism. However, the extent of our understanding of how skeletogenesis is regulated is limited by our inability to observe the process dynamically in individual embryos. Early in development, embryos begin to swim. To image them, the embryos must be immobilized; however, current immobilization techniques are either highly transient, perturb normal development, or are lethal. To resolve this issue, she is working with Zachary Heins in the Khalil Lab to engineer a simple flow device that will continuously deliver a non-toxic paralytic drug to immobilize the embryos throughout development. By combining this device with fluorescent biomineralization read-outs and transplanted PMCs, she will for the first time visualize the entire process of PMC migration and skeletal biomineralization in individual live embryos. She will then introduce pharmacological perturbations to disrupt previously identified patterning cues and observe how they impact skeletal patterning and development in real time. This work will provide unprecedented insight into both the biomineralization process and the mechanisms driving PMC migration and embryonic patterning.
Congratulations, Marisol and Abigail!
Margaret O’Connor Receives Charles Terner Award
Margaret O'Connor of the Man Lab is this year's recipient of the Biology Department's Charles Terner Award. Margaret is investigating the X-linked protein NEXMIF, which is associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). She uses a transgenic mouse model to study the role NEXMIF plays in brain development, specifically neuronal growth and dendritic spine development. There are a number of human patients with NEXMIF dependent ASD. Her research currently focuses on the unique situation of female heterozygotes which mosaically express NEXMIF yet still develop ASD.
This award provides support for a CM or MCBB PhD candidate who has made significant contributions to their field. Charles Terner was a Professor of Biology at Boston University for over 20 years before he retired in 1985. Dr. Terner specialized in biochemistry and focused his research on the metabolic properties of male reproductive cells. The award was established in his memory after he passed away in 1998.
Congratulations, Margaret!
Dr. Thomas Gilmore Awarded NSF Grant for Interdisciplinary Research
Dr. Thomas Gilmore and Dr. Sarah Davies of Biology have received a four-year National Science Foundation research grant to investigate Transcription Factors in Cnidarian Immunity, Symbiosis, and Bleaching. This interdisciplinary research combines molecular pathway analyses with marine ecology and genomics to better understand immunity and stress responses, which are often impacted by climate change, in corals and sea anemones.
Remembering Sir Hans Kornberg
The MCBB Program mourns the loss of Sir Hans Kornberg, Professor of Biology, member of the MCBB program, and teacher of biochemistry to numerous MCBB students for over 20 years.
Born in 1928, Hans Kornberg fled to the UK from Nazi Germany at the age of 11. After finding an interest in chemistry, Dr. Kornberg studied in the Krebs Lab at the University of Sheffield and earned his PhD in Biochemistry in 1953. After working in several research labs in the US and the UK and lecturing at Oxford, Dr. Kornberg was a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Leicester. He was the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, and later served as the 34th Master of Christ's College and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for the University of Cambridge. Upon retirement in 1995, Dr. Kornberg was invited to serve as Director of the Boston University University Professors Program, which he did until the program's end in 2011. In addition to leading the UNI program, he was a Professor of Biology and he taught Biochemistry to undergraduate and graduate students at Boston University for the past 24 years.
He was the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society in 1965, and was knighted in 1978. He holds 11 honorary doctorates and was a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, as well as a Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the UK Biochemical Society’s inaugural Colworth Medal and the Warburg Medal of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Sir Hans’ research, conducted for over 70 years, was focused on the regulation of carbohydrate transport in micro-organisms. Starting out as a bottle washer for Hans Krebs, Hans Kornberg was an author of over 250 publications. Two of his significant scientific accomplishments were the elucidation of the glyoxylate cycle and the concept and mechanisms of anaplerosis, the former being a cycle used by plants and other non-animals to enable the biosynthesis of biomass from 2-carbon compounds, and the latter being an important mechanism assuring that carbon oxidation by the Krebs cycle can continue by replenishing the intermediates that are drained by various biosynthetic reactions.
Sir Hans will be greatly missed by his colleagues and students. Not just a brilliant biochemist and skilled educator, Dr. Kornberg always had an anecdote or witty story at hand, whether about his friendship with Julie Andrews in his youth or his affinity for Latin wordplay. Visitors to the Kornberg Lab were promptly invited to take part in the most important experiment of all: making coffee! Sir Hans is remembered for his generosity, incredible wit, many stories, endless puns, and cheerful nature.
Sir Hans was the dearly loved husband of Donna and of the late Monica; cherished father of Julia, Rachel, Jonathan and Simon; and adored grandfather and great-grandfather. The Funeral Service took place December 20th at the Falmouth Jewish Congregation in East Falmouth, MA. Donations may be made in Sir Hans' memory to the Hans Kornberg travel prize at Christ's College, Cambridge, England.
Dr. Xue Han Featured in The Brink
Dr. Xue Han was a co–corresponding author for "Population imaging of neural activity in awake behaving mice," recently published in Nature and featured in The Brink. The paper reports a new technique that gives the clearest picture ever of brain cell activity. Using a voltage-sensing molecule that fluorescently lights up when brain cells are electrically active, researchers at BU and MIT have shown that they can see the activity of many more individual neurons than before as they fire inside the brains of mice.
Read the full Brink article here.
Dr. Ji-Xin Cheng Receives 2020 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award
Dr. Ji-Xin Cheng has recently been named the recipient of the 2020 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award. The Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh (SSP), a co-founder of the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, is the sponsor of the annual Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award. This award is for recognition of outstanding contributions in the field of spectroscopy, and is presented at the annual Pittsburgh Conference. The SPP aims to highlight the contributions of international leaders in the field of spectroscopy that have developed novel spectroscopies and/or demonstrated important novel applications.
Dr. Cheng was also featured in a College of Engineering news post; read the article here.