research

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.

Public Art and Artistic Truth Lecturer at K

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Author, philosopher and theologian Lambert Zuidervaart
Author, philosopher and theologian Lambert Zuidervaart

Kalamazoo College will host two public lectures on “Artistic Truth” and “Public Art” by Lambert Zuidervaart, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and a member of the graduate faculties in theology and philosophy at the University of Toronto. He was recently appointed Director of ICS’s Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics. His recent books include Art in Public (2011), Dog-Kissed Tears (2010), Social Philosophy after Adorno (2007), and Artistic Truth (2004).

On Thursday Feb. 28, his topic will be “Artistic Truth.” On Friday March 1, his topic will be “Public Art.” Both lectures take place in the Olmsted Room, in Mandelle Hall, at the corner of Academy and Thompson streets on the K campus. Free and open to the public, the lectures start at 8:00 p.m. Call (269) 337-7076 for more info.

Zuidervaart is a recognized expert in critical theory, especially the work of Theodor Adorno. His research and teaching range across continental philosophy, hermeneutics, social philosophy, and philosophy of art, with an emphasis on Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas. He is currently developing a comprehensive and transformative conception of truth, in debate with prominent philosophers in both analytic and continental traditions.

Before moving to Toronto in 2002, Zuidervaart was a professor of philosophy at Calvin College for 17 years and served as board member and president of the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts.

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 Students Will Benefit from Chemistry Grant Renewal

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Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge has received a renewal of her National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to support continued research in the area of drug-drug interactions. She will conduct this research with undergraduate science students at Kalamazoo College. Adverse drug-drug interactions are common among individuals who take multiple drugs (both over the counter and prescribed), particularly among older persons and among individuals whose bodies express variants of drug metabolizing (drug processing) enzymes. The research in the Furge lab will benefit human health by adding to the understanding of how certain classes of drugs may interact in individuals and cause drug-drug induced unfavorable medical events. Furge currently has five research students working in her lab and has mentored two dozen in her lab and many more in her classes over the past 13 years at K. Funding from the NIH will help ensure continued research opportunities for future generations of scientists. The grant will provide $225,000 over three years.

 

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.

K Psychology Professor and Student Publish Collaborative Research

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Siu-Lan Tan, John Baxa and Sally Warner in the Olmsted Room at Kalamazoo CollegePsychology professor Siu-Lan Tan and K alumnus John Baxa ’09 published a book chapter on their video game research in the book Interdisciplinary Advancements in Gaming, Simulations, and Virtual Environments (published in 2012 by IGI Global, edited by R. Ferdig and S. de Freitas). Their research focuses on the role of music and sound effects on video game performance in gamers with different levels of expertise. It is based on collaborative work between Tan and Baxa beginning in his sophomore year, continuing through his Senior Individualized Project, and extending beyond his graduation. Baxa is currently a graduate student pursuing a degree in Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University, where he will learn video game design and may be able to implement their research on sound design in future video games. Baxa (right) is pictured with Tan (center) last April, at her Lucasse teaching award presentation. Also shown is Sally Warner ’08 (left), who worked with Tan for three years to co-organize service-learning projects and assisted her on a book manuscript. Warner is currently working on a Doctorate in curriculum, instruction, and teacher education at Michigan State University.

K Connection Spans 30 Years in Internship

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Cassandra Fraser and Michael Paule-CarresCassandra Fraser, Class of 1984, is a chemistry professor at the University of Virginia. This summer she hosted Michael Paule-Carres, Class of 2014, in her laboratory, where he did research for his Senior Individualized Project. “It was kind of scary to contemplate that 30 year gap!” wrote Fraser, who had a good antidote for any mild “gap fear.” The formula included the excellence of the lab work Paule-Carres conducted. “He synthesized and characterized a luminescent polymer that will be used to make oxygen nanosensors for wound diagnostics, tumor hypoxia imaging, and other medical uses,” Fraser explained. And for extra measure, a few funny photos were added. “We took some research group pictures, including some of Mike (right) and me together, the Kalamazoo College chemists. We even attempted to make K’s with our bodies, not so successfully mind you, but maybe it’s the thought that counts.” Mike has returned to campus for the beginning of men’s varsity soccer practice.

 

K Professor and Students Publish Encouraging Science on the Search for a Useful Bio-Indicator

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Maintaining good human health depends in part on reliable markers. Think blood pressure in cardiovascular medicine or blood sugar and triglyceride levels in determining the effects of diet on metabolic disorders. Reliable markers are important for ecological health as well, which is why science seeks them. Associate Professor of Biology Ann Fraser and five Kalamazoo College undergraduates recently published peer-reviewed science (“Evaluating Multiple Arthropod Taxa as Indicators of Invertebrate Diversity in Old Fields,” The Great Lakes Entomologist, Vol. 45, Nos. 1 – 2) that advances efforts to find a manageable indicator of the effect invasive species have on biodiversity.

Like most good science, the journey was both years long and collaborative—as well as a great example of the kind of professor-student partnerships that make science education at K great—a matter of “more in four years.” The idea for the project began with some preliminary data gathered during a lab exercise in Fraser’s Organism Diversity class. That field work took place at the College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum, where the class sought to test whether the invasive plant species known as spotted knapweed was affecting ground-dwelling invertebrates (mainly insects). Joe Waller ’06 followed up on the preliminary class data with a more in-depth study for his Senior Individualized Project. He used pitfall traps to collect invertebrates in areas with varying densities of knapweed but was soon overwhelmed with huge numbers and types of insects to sort through. He shifted the focus of his SIP to determine whether a certain insect or other arthropod species, such as spiders, might be a proxy or reliable marker for general invertebrate diversity. He spent most of his summer sorting through and classifying thousands of specimens. In late summer a second round of pitfall sampling was conducted and the project’s torch was passed to other undergraduates.

The sorting, identification, and matching of this second sample with the first sample were conducted by Alyssa Bradshaw ’08, David Hyman ’08, Michael Johnson ’06, and Rob Morrison ’06. “We were able to identify several insect groups as promising indicators of larger invertebrate diversity in old field habitat,” said Fraser. “More work across a greater number of field sites is needed to confirm their usefulness as bio-indicators, but this is an encouraging first step in finding manageable ways to assess the impact of invasive plant species on invertebrate diversity.”

Fraser cited the pivotal role of Morrison in bringing the project to completion and publication, earning him first author on the paper. Such studies are time-consuming but well suited to undergraduate research projects. The K grads continue their science education in various ways. “Rob Morrison is conducting his Ph.D. in applied entomology at Michigan State,” said Fraser. “Joe Waller, I believe, is in a physician assistant program at Michigan or MSU. Alyssa Brayshaw has been working as a research assistant in wildlife biology and is applying to graduate programs in that subject; David Hyman is in medical school at Loyola University in Chicago, and Michael Johnson will begin his Ph.D. in paleontology at the University of Wisconsin this fall. It’s very satisfying to see this collaborative project come to fruition with a peer reviewed publication.”