After a long tenure as the Plant and Microbial curator at the USDA-ARS National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, Dave Ellis will start a new adventure in his career as the Head of the Genebank at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru. Starting on November 1, 2012 Dave will assume the role of overseeing the maintenance of the active collection as well as the secure long-term preservation of the in-trust global collection of potatoes, sweet potatoes and Andean roots and tuber crops. Valerie Pence recently was an invited speaker at the symposium, “The Modern Seed Bank: The Enhanced Role of Cryopreservation,” at the National Cheng Kung University and the Endemic Species Research Institute in Taiwan, in September. The meeting brought together researchers from the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, China, and Taiwan to discuss best practices and the establishment of ex situ germplasm banking of seeds and in vitro tissues for the endemic flora of Taiwan. CREW’s Plant Division (Valerie Pence, PI) has been awarded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the project entitled, “Evaluating Two Decades of Seeds, Spores, and Tissues in CREW’s CryoBioBank: Cryostorage as a Tool for Ex Situ Conservation in Botanical Gardens.” Through the grant, CREW’s Plant Division research team will assess over 980 samples of seeds, spores, pollen, and tissues from 178 species, many among the nation’s most endangered, that have been stored up to 24 years in liquid nitrogen. Current viability and genetic integrity will be determined and used to evaluate the effectiveness of the methods used at the time of banking, as well as effects of tissue, age, genotype, species, and storage location. The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden will receive $460,000 in grant award money over the three-year period of the grant, and the results of the study should provide botanical gardens with a significant leap forward in the body of knowledge from which to draw in order to develop their own strategies for the stewardship of their seed and in vitro tissue collections. Dr. Joseph Petolino published an article titled “Transcriptional activation of Brassica napus β-ketoacyl-ACP synthase II with an engineered zinc finger protein transcription finger” in the Plant Biotechnology Journal. Use the attached link to read the abstract of the paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22520333 . Dr. Petolino also published the chapter titled “testing DNA to a previously integrated transgenic locus using zinc finger nucleases” in Methods in Molecular Biology (847:391-7, 2012). Use the attached link to read the abstract of this chapter http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22351024 . Argelia Lorence, Associate Professor at the Arkansas Biosciences Institute and the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Arkansas State University (Jonesboro, Arkansas), gave the opening plenary talk at the 51th Annual Meeting of the Phytochemical Society of North America (PSNA) in London, Ontario, Canada. Her presentation entitled: “Engineering elevated vitamin C in plants to improve their nutritional content, growth, and tolerance to stress” was attended by over 100 faculty, post-doctoral associates, graduate, and undergraduate students participating in this prestigious annual event. Dr. Lorence has been part of PSNA since 2002, the year in which she received the Neish Young Investigator Award presented by this professional society to promising researchers working in the area of phytochemistry. During this event Lorence was invited and accepted to join the Advisory Board of PSNA.
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Dr. Leonard Hayflick, Professor of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, talks about the “Hayflick limit” and cellular mortality and immortality in an entertaining interview with Radiolab. Please use the link below to listen to the interview. Life’s Limit – Radiolab In September of 2012, Dr. Lucila (Lucy) Lee started her new job as Dean of Science at University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia in Canada. Please use the link below to read the full press release. http://blogs.ufv.ca/2012/08/a-new-term-a-new-dean-of-science-dr-lucila-lee-joins-ufv-in-september/ Dr. Daniel Acosta stepped down on January 1, 2012 as Dean of Pharmacy at the Winkle College of Pharmacy after more than 15 years of service, and after a one year sabbatical, he will return to faculty status on January 1, 2013 at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Acosta was also selected as the Joseph Carl Chair of Pharmacy at the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Acosta has also received the following honors and awards: 1) Elected President of the International Union of Toxicology, 2010-2013–a federation of over 50 countries and their national societies of toxicology; 2) Elected President of the Board of Directors for Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the risk of chemical exposure to humans and the environment–important information given to the public and government sectors; 3) Appointed a member of the FDA Science Board, the primary committee providing advice to the FDA Commissioner on national issues of importance to the agency; 4) Appointed to the Dean’s Advisory Committee and the Research Advisory Committee for the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Pharmacy; 5) Selected as a member of the PhRMA Foundation Basic Pharmacology Advisory Committee, which is responsible for selecting on a nationally competitive basis PreDoctoral Fellowships, PostDoctoral Fellowships, Beginning Investigator Starter Grants, and Sabbatical Research Grants. Dr. Karl Maramorosch participated in the International Symposium on Cell Biology and the Ukrainian Congress for Cell Biology in Yalta, Ukraine in May 2012. There he delivered the Plenary Lecture entitled “Viruses, Prions, and Nobel Prizes”. In August Karl attended the 45th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology and the International Congress on Microbial Control in Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 5 – 9, 2012, where he presented a special lecture titled “The three G’s- Personal reminiscences of invertebrate culture pioneers Goldschmidt, Gao and Grace”. He also spoke about the oldest living Nobel Prize winner, Rita Levi Montalcini, who last April celebrated her 103rd birthday in Rome, Italy. Karl met Rita the first time 65 years ago, when she was working in the United States on organ culture of Periplaneta americana. The Agricultural University SGGW in Warsaw, Poland, awarded Karl their Honorary Medal on May 18. Dr. Maramorosch graduated from that university in 1938. On October 8, 2012, Taylor LaVallie started a new job as a Research Laboratory Technician in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Southern California. Jeff Kwak recently accepted the position of Research Associate in the Biomedical Sciences Program at Midwestern University (Downers Grove, IL). Dr. Miho Furue has a new position as Leader of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Cultures in the Division of Bioresources at the National Institute of Biomedical Innovation (Osaka, Japan). Dr. Furue also has a recent publication titled “Generation of metabolically functioning hepatocytes from human pluripotent stem cells by FOXA2 and HNF1α transcription” in the Journal of Hepatology. Use the attached link to read the abstract of the paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22659344 . Dr. Furue also contributed to the following book: STEM CELLS AND CANCER STEM CELLS, Volume 5: Therapeutic Applications in Disease and Injury. M.A.Hayat Ed. Monolayer culture condition for Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells differentiation into Neural Crest Cells.p233-240. Springer, Amsterdam (2012). Dr. Frank Barile, Professor of Clinical & Applied Toxicology in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. John’s University College of Pharmacy has been appointed an international Editor-in-Chief for the journal Toxicology In Vitro. Dr. Barile also published an article titled “Trace metals alter DNA repair and histone modification pathways concurrently in mouse embryonic stem cells” in the journal Toxicology Letters (212:169-179, 2012). Use the attached link to read the abstract of the paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22641096 . Dr. Sachiko Yamasaki was awarded the Best presentation Award from the Japanese Stomatological Society for her presentation on May 18, 2012 titled “ Generation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in serum- and feeder-free defined culture from dental pulp cells derived from a patient with cleidocranial dysplasia“. Dr. Kolbrun (Kolla) Kristjansdottir has joined the Biomedical Sciences Program on the Downers Grove, IL campus of Midwestern University. Dr. Kristjansdottir received her B.S and M.S. degrees in Biochemistry from the University of Iceland (Reykjavik, Iceland). She received her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Biochemistry at Duke University (Durham, NC). She did her postdoctoral training at the Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research at the University of Chicago. Dr. Kristjansdottir’s research involves examining phosphoprotein expression and cellular signaling in cancer. Dr. Hongxing Lei has published a paper titled “Concerted perturbation observed in a hub network in Alzheimer’s disease in the journal PLos One (7(7):e40498). Use the attached link to read the abstract of the paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22815752 . Dr. Michael J. Fay, Professor of Pharmacology & Biomedical Sciences Program Director, Midwestern University (Downers Grove, IL), is a co-author on the paper titled “Effects of cadmium on the sub-cellular localization of β-catenin and β-catenin-regulated gene expression in NRK-52E cells” in the journal Biometals (2012 Oct 19. [Epub ahead of print]; PMID:23080431). Please use the attached link to read the abstract of the paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23080431.
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The following Biotechnology training courses are being offered at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. These Workshops are sponsored by the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences. For more information on these workshops please visit www.biotrac.com.
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