Dr. Alex Werth gave an invited colloquium lecture to space scientists at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland on evolutionary rates—how quickly or slowly do species evolve, and why?—and the resulting consequences for exobiology (extraterrestrial life). The lecture was spurred by the article Prof. Werth recently published with Prof. Bill Shear in American Scientist on “living fossils.” If life exists within reach of Earth-based probes—for example, on the watery moons of Jupiter and Saturn—would it evolve by the same mechanisms as life on our planet? What are the problems of studying species over long periods of time, and how might this affect our study of potential life on other worlds? The lecture gave Prof. Werth an opportunity to observe facilities for constructing and testing space probes, as well as to visit with two former Hampden-Sydney astronomy professors (Dr. Hans Krimm and Dr. Don Kniffen, both at H-SC in the 1990s) and their families.

Scientists working at the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center

Senior Biology major Stephen Woodall ’15, who presented his Departmental Honors research in March at the 2015 National Meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Boston, MA, was recently named the recipient of the Thematic Best Poster Award for the conference’s theme on Molecular Mechanisms of Infection and Immunity.  Stephen’s poster was selected by theme organizers from among 84 posters in his category for its outstanding research, which involved the genetic engineering of a mouse melanoma cell line for the purpose of evaluating anti-tumor CD8+ T cell immune responses.  Stephen’s poster was selected from presentations from graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research scientists from around the world.  Stephen conducted this research in the laboratory of Elliott Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Kristian M. Hargadon ’01.  He will be attending N.C. State in the fall for a Master’s in Physiology Graduate Program.

The ASBMB annual meeting is recognized for the breadth of the science covered. Held in conjunction with Experimental Biology 2015, the ASBMB sessions and events at this year’s conference represented an unrivaled opportunity to learn about the latest discoveries in the range of subdisciplines that fall under the biochemistry and molecular biology umbrellas.

Stephen Woodall ’15 at the 2015 National ASBMB Meeting and his award-winning poster entitled “Genetic Engineering of the Murine Melanoma D5.1G4 to Express a Model Antigen for Evaluation of Anti-tumor CD8+ T Cell Responses”

Travis Goodloe ’15 was recently awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research for his summer research project that he will be conducting in collaboration with Elliott Asisstant Professor of Biology Dr. Kristian M. Hargadon ’01.  Travis will be developing an assay to measure melanoma cell metastasis to tumor-draining lymph nodes, and he will use this assay to investigate the rate of lymph node metastasis by melanomas of differing tumorigenicity.  Lymph node metastasis is often associated with immune suppression in melanoma patients, and the assay developed by Travis will therefore be a useful system for investigating factors that regulate the spread of melanomas to regional lymph nodes and for assessing the quality of anti-tumor immune responses in tumor-free versus tumor-involved lymph nodes.

The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) program has provided undergraduate and graduate students with valuable educational experiences since 1922. By encouraging close working relationships between students and mentors, the program promotes scientific excellence and achievement through hands-on learning.

Three Hampden-Sydney seniors, Jay Brandt, Chris Ferrante, and Stephen Woodall, recently presented their research work at the annual Experimental Biology (EB) meeting in Boston.  EB is a federation of six different biological professional societies and is one of the largest scientific conferences in the world.

Woodall, Ferrante, and Brandt at the conference

Chris Ferrante was the first recipient of the Hampden-Sydney student chapter of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s travel award, which is available to a Hampden-Sydney biochemist/molecular biologist each year to defray the costs of attending the meeting.  All three students participated in two poster sessions, one specifically for undergraduates and one for the general meeting.

Ferrante and Brandt presenting at the undergraduate poster session, where over 250 students from across the nation and several countries presented their research

To give an idea of the scope of the EB meeting, Chris and Jay’s poster in the general session was sandwiched between posters from Hiroshima University, Japan, and Harvard Medical School while Stephen’s fell between work from the University of Connecticut and Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland.

Woodall at the general session

Stephen after visiting the many, many vendors at the meeting

Stephen’s work with Dr. Kristian Hargadon examined tumor immunology in a mouse model while Jay and Chris’ work with Drs. Mike Wolyniak and Bill Anderson considered the synthesis of polypeptides to create new forms of antibiotics.  All three students plan on attending medical school in the future, with Jay already set to begin at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in the fall of 2015 as part of H-SC’s early articulation agreement with EVMS.

On Faneuil Hall with Samuel Adams

It was a big meeting!

On March 24, five Hampden-Sydney College and four Longwood University students were inducted into Sigma Xi, the international honorary scientific research society.  Founded in 1886 to honor excellence in scientific investigation and to encourage collaboration among researchers in all fields of science and engineering, the Society now consists of over 500 chapters at academic, industrial, and government research institutions and has nearly 60,000 members in more than 100 countries around the world.  The Longwood University/Hampden-Sydney College chapter of Sigma Xi was reactivated in 2013, and the two institutions now alternate hosting an annual Sigma Xi Research Symposium that features a keynote speaker and student poster presentations highlighting recent research activities on both campuses.

2015 Sigma Xi Initiates. From left to right: Back row – Stephen Woodall II, H-SC ’15; Bryan McQueen, LU ’15; Davis Carter, H-SC ’15. Middle row – Adam Lynch, LU ’16; Aaron Gilani, H-SC ’15; Brant Boucher, H-SC ’17; James Lau, H-SC ’17. Front row – Sara Jacobson, LU ’15; Kelsey Trace, LU ’15.

Six Hampden-Sydney College students were recently selected to participate in the newly established H-SC/Centra Pre-Health Rotational Shadowing Program.  Benjamin Lam, Brant Boucher, DJ Bines, Jake Farrar, James Lau, and Robert Kerby will begin their rotations this semester and will have the option to continue their shadowing in the Fall 2015 semester as well.  Through this program, these students will be exposed to various fields of medicine as they rotate through departments that include: Family Medicine, General Surgery, Cardiovascular Medicine, Emergency Medicine, the ICU, Gastrointestinal Medicine, OB/Gyn, Radiology, and Pharmacy.  The shadowing experience afforded by this partnership will provide these students with valuable healthcare exposure hours that will increase awareness of potential career paths in healthcare and enhance preparation for graduate and professional programs in medicine and the health sciences.  Together, these benefits will provide H-SC students with a competitive edge as applicants to medical and health professional schools.

The H-SC/Centra Pre-Health Rotational Shadowing Program will be ongoing, and applications will be solicited in the Fall 2015 semester for a new set of rotations to begin the following spring.

H-SC’s Spring 2015 participants in the Centra/H-SC Pre-Health Rotational Shadowing Program. Pictured left to right: Benjamin Lam ’17, Jake Farrar ’16, DJ Bines ’17, James Lau ’17, Brant Boucher’17, and Robert Kerby ’17

The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP), a coalition of undergraduate institutions started by Dr. Sally Elgin of Washington University in St. Louis for the purpose of bringing original and authentic research opportunities to all undergraduate students, has announced the acceptance of its latest peer-reviewed publication based on student work. The paper is found in the journal G3: Genes,Genomes, Genetics and has among its authors Greg Robertson ’12, former Hampden-Sydney student Samuel Smith, and Assistant Professor of Biology Mike Wolyniak.  The paper, entitled “Drosophila Muller F elements maintain a distinct set of genomic properties over 40 million years of evolution”, examines how study of the fruit fly genomes can reveal a great deal about how different species develop and evolve over time.  Robertson, Smith, and Wolyniak examined individual sections of genomic sequence from a bioinformatics perspective, annotating the sequence for coding sequence start and stop sites and well as splice sites.

The GEP is one of several initiatives available to Hampden-Sydney biology students as they learn how to conduct real science during their time in Gilmer Hall.

A link to the paper may be found at http://g3journal.org/content/early/2015/03/04/g3.114.015966.abstract

Throughout the Fall 2014 semester, the H-SC Molecular and Cellular Biology class worked to discover and characterize new phages that infect bacteria of the genus Bacillus as part of their original research in conjunction with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) SEA-PHAGES project.  As part of this project, representatives of the class travelled to the University of Mary Washington, a SEA-PHAGES collaborator, to get pictures of their phages on their electron microscope.  The pictures provided the students invaluable insight on the nature of their new discoveries, which have been catalogued with the central SEA-PHAGES lab at the University of Pittsburgh as part of their ongoing work on viral evolution.

“BlakeE”, as discovered by Travis Goodloe ’16

“HSCtrl”, as discovered by Chris Ferrante ’15. Note the DNA spilling out from the capsid head of this sample.

Phage “Archie14”, as discovered by Stephen Woodall ’15, has been sequenced by the University of Pittsburgh and returned to H-SC for analysis.  The next step in the research will be done by students interested in bioinformatics who will thoroughly examine Archie14’s genome for particular genetic features that make it unique from other phages. This project, along with projects in several other H-SC biology classes, is part of an effort in the department to make research a central part of the H-SC biology experience.

Three Hampden-Sydney biologists, Jay Brandt ’15, Chris Ferrante ’15, and Taylor Meinhardt ’16, accompanied Professor Mike Wolyniak to the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in Philadelphia.  The ASCB Annual Meeting attracts roughly 8,000 scientists and exhibitors from around the world each December, including Nobel laureates and other top names in the field.  Jay and Chris presented their joint project on peptide synthesis as a potential novel form of antibiotic.  The research is both their Senior Fellowship project at H-SC and a semester-long classroom research opportunity in which Jay and Chris will work with Professor Wolyniak’s Genetics and Cell Biology class in the spring 2015 semester to collect and analyze data. First, Jay and Chris presented at the undergraduate poster session, featuring 150 different projects drawn across the full gamut of cell biology fields.

Chris Ferrante ’15 and Jay Brandt ’15 at the undergraduate poster presentation session

The site of the undergraduate poster presentation. The Atrium of the Pennsylvania Convention Center was once the trainshed for the Reading Railroad.

Jay and Chris gave their presentation again two days later at the general session alongside  undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and career scientists:

Representing Hampden-Sydney at the general session

Professor Wolyniak gave a talk and a poster at the meeting about a new ASCB teaching mentorship program piloted at Hampden-Sydney last academic year which has potential to become a national model.  The meeting also gave students like Taylor interested in a career in biological research the opportunity to attend sessions on how to get into graduate school and select a research lab as well as take in the research activities of leaders in cell biology related fields.

There was also time to take in Philadelphia:

The Liberty Bell with Independence Hall in the background

One of four eagles on the Market Street Bridge. Originally from Penn Station in New York City, 22 identical eagles still exist today, including the four on this bridge and one on the H-SC campus.

Taylor, Prof. Wolyniak, Chris, and Jay….brotherly love in the City of Brotherly Love

The Fall 2014 Molecular and Cellular Biology class at Hampden-Sydney has been an active participant in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute SEA-PHAGES program, isolating and characterizing viruses that infect Bacillus bacteria as part of a nationwide project on viral evolution and genomics.  As part of this class experience, 5 students from the class prepared research presentations for the James Madison University “Phage Phaire”, a gathering of research students from James Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion University, the University of Mary Washington, and Hampden-Sydney.  These 5 schools are part of the current 74-member nationwide HHMI SEA-PHAGES alliance and organize two research meetings per year to provide students with the chance to share their work with their peers.

Travis Goodloe ’16 presents his work on BlakeE, a phage of Bacillus cereus discovered on the H-SC campus.

Spencer Wiles ’15 presenting his work on Bacillus thuringiensis phage LargeMarge

Will Banning ’15 with his work on B. thuringiensis page Precious (co-doscovered with Mitch Cavallarin ’15)

Tucker Hudgins ’15 presenting phage TuckHudge to Phage Phaire keynote speaker Dr. Daniel Nelson of the University of Maryland-College Park

Dr. Lucia Barker of HHMI leans about phage Mavro from Corey Mavromatis ’16

Travis Goodloe ’16 received an award at the event for the best organized and designed poster from among all students, while Spencer Wiles ’15 received recognition for the meetings favorite phage name with “LargeMarge”.  The class will continue to work on characterizing their phages as the semester draws to a close and genomic sequences from the collected phages will be analyzed by H-SC students via bioinformatics.

Team H-SC with Mr. Madison on the JMU campus